ES- LANE -ALLEN 


LIBRARY 

UNIVERSITY  OF 
CALIFORNIA 

SAN  DIEGO 


/     /  s-~~ — 7~     /O 

L^C^^a^t^t^    Ls . 


Uo 

I.  F.  M. 


THE  HEROINE  IN   BRONZE 


THE  HEROINE  IN  BRONZE 

OR 

A  PORTRAIT  OF  A  GIRL 

A  Pastoral  of  the  City 


BY 
JAMES   LANE   ALLEN 

AUTHOR   OF   "THE  KENTUCKY   CARDINAL" 
"THE   CHOIR  INVISIBLE,"   ETC. 


ff  fltfe 

THE  MACMILLAN   COMPANY 
1912 

All  rights  reserved 


COPYRIGHT,  1913, 
BY  THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY. 


Set  up  and  electrotyped.    Published  October,  1912. 


Norfoooto 

J.  S.  Gushing  Co.  —  Berwick  &  Smith  Co. 
Norwood,  Mass.,  U.S.A. 


Dedication 

TO  YOUTH— ITS  KINGDOM  AND   IDEALS 


There  is  no  other  healing  for  love,  O  Nicias,  either 
as  an  ointment  or  as  a  plaster,  except  the  Muses.  But 
agreeable  and  desirable  though  this  remedy  be  in  the 
lives  of  men,  it  is  not  easy  to  procure. 

—  THEOCRITUS. 


I  loved  you,  damsel,  the  first  time  you  came  ...  to 
pluck  hyacinths  on  the  mountain  with  me  as  your  guide. 
I  could  not  leave  off  loving  you  the  first  time  I  beheld 
you.  I  could  not  leave  off  loving  you  afterwards.  And 
I  cannot  leave  off  loving  you  now. 

—  THEOCRITUS. 


THE  HEROINE  IN  BRONZE 

CHAPTER  I 

FEW  years  ago,  in  the  budding 
month  of  June,  one  morning  as 
the  east  began  to  flush  rose- 
colored  with  the  dawn,  I  awoke ; 
and  upon  awaking,  discovered 
that  I  had  an  original  story  to  give  to  the 
world  —  a  perfect  love-story  of  a  youthful  pair. 
Now  a  gift  is  often  a  galling  load  :  alike  to  him 
who  carries  it  and  to  him  on  whose  shoulders  it 
is  laid  and  left.  But  the  gift  of  a  good  story  bur 
dens  neither  and  lightens  both.  It  is  perhaps 
the  only  kindness  that  may  always  be  safely 
offered  to  an  enemy  and  to  a  stranger  and  to  a 
friend ;  it  is  surely  the  only  traveller  that,  start 
ing  anywhere,  can  journey  everywhere  without 
cost  or  risk;  invigorating  all  minds  without 
losing  its  vigor;  emptying  laughter  and  tears 
round  the  whole  earth,  yet  keeping  them  un- 
3 


4  The  Heroine  in  Bronze 

wasted  like  a  cloud.  The  world  never  has  too 
many  good  stories;  it  is  perpetually  impatient 
for  one  more ;  it  would  be  ready  —  and  grateful 
—  to  listen  to  mine. 

This  reflection  encouraged  me.  The  several 
pulplike  romances  on  which  I  had  first  per 
suaded  myself  that  I  should  help  to  nourish 
mankind  had  not  sustained  that  favorable  esti 
mate  of  their  importance;  mankind  had  not 
shared  my  view  that  those  works  held  any  of  the 
nutriment  of  its  delight.  It  had  nibbled,  but  had 
decided  not  to  partake,  and  had  even  left  it  to 
me  to  express  the  necessary  regrets :  I  duly  ex 
pressed  them. 

I  was  pleased,  moreover,  that  my  story  had 
come  to  me  in  the  early  hours  of  the  morning 
while  as  yet  the  day  had  not  a  footstep  on  it, 
not  a  finger-print,  not  a  breath  that  might  be  a 
stain.  For  the  work  itself,  as  I  have  intimated, 
was  about  youth — life's  dawn ;  the  white  dews  of 
nature  still  lay  over  it,  over  that  land  of  youth. 

And  then,  finally,  the  story  was  so  wholly 
mine  and  of  myself.  I  had  not  had  the  ill-luck 
to  find  my  treasure  in  the  neighborhood  of  some 


The  Parting  5 

other  man's  treasure,  just  outside  the  covers  of 
his  book,  just  beyond  the  range  of  his  con 
versation.  I  had  not  been  racked  with  the 
need  of  a  story,  had  not  been  hunting  for  one 
through  the  forest  of  my  brain  as  the  beast  must 
find  within  his  jungle  some  quarry  to  keep  him 
from  starving.  I  had  not  done  anything.  It 
came  as  our  best  things,  greatest  things,  always 
come,  not  by  outside  compulsion,  but  by  growth 
within  and  as  the  silent  rewards  of  what  we  our 
selves  are,  the  inevitable  rewards  of  what  we 
are.  The  sculptor  sometimes  quietly  awakens 
with  his  most  human  statue ;  the  musician  with 
greater  music ;  the  poet  with  a  finer  song ;  the 
painter  with  a  fairer  country ;  the  scientist  with 
some  vaster  law  of  the  earth  or  of  the  air  or 
of  the  stars  —  all  as  the  rewards  of  what  they 
themselves  are.  I,  an  unknown  writer  of  a  few 
unsuccessful  tales,  a  youth  two  seasons  out  of  col 
lege  and  dowered  as  to  fortune  with  one  dry  rec 
tangle  of  university  parchment  and  twenty-two 
green  years,  I,  by  name  Donald  Clough,  and  by 
nature  an  optimist  and  by  hope  a  philosopher 
of  the  heart, — fired  with  the  wish  to  create  a 


6  The  Heroine  in  Bronze 

work  which  might  by  its  shape  and  substance 
touch  the  unchangingly  sound  heart  of  mankind 
and  thus  become  a  classic, —  I,  after  failures  and 
disappointments,  awoke  triumphantly  with  a 
little  masterpiece.  If  any  masterpiece  may  be 
called  little,  if  so  great  a  matter  as  perfection 
can  have  aught  to  do  with  so  small  a  thing  as 
size. 

The  immediate  resolve  was  to  carry  the  ti 
dings  of  this  good  fortune  to  her  whose  approval 
of  my  work,  whose  approval  of  me,  meant  my 
happiness.  The  masterpiece  as  soon  as  fin 
ished  would  itself  go  to  her  as  yet  another  of 
fering.  I  myself  had  been  but  an  offering  from 
the  first  day  I  beheld  her,  that  perfect  day  of 
the  June  previous,  with  its  balmy  airs  and  blue 
sky,  on  her  crowded,  sunny,  college  campus,  on 
the  day  of  her  distinguished  graduation,  when 
she,  mounting  with  her  elect  sisterhood,  all  in 
white,  a  rose- twined  platform,  had  read  to  a 
delirious  audience  her  finishing  essay  (the  essay 
that  finished  me) ;  when  afterwards,  descending 
from  the  platform  and  standing  with  bowed 
head  —  that  exquisite  head  with  the  gold  of 


The  Parting  7 

dawn  on  it  —  she,  Muriel  Dunstan,  had  received 
from  an  impersonal  president  the  diploma  of 
her  dismissal  in  honor  and  peace ;  and  then  had 
been  turned  sorrowfully  out  of  doors  by  all  her 
old  professors  in  a  body,  to  enter  alone  the 
rougher  pathways  of  young  men.  Most  sorrow 
fully  by  the  professor  of  English  whose  favorite 
brilliant  pupil  she  had  been :  though  this  was 
not  the  reason  why  he  was  in  love  with  her, 
after  the  masklike  antique  manner  of  professors 
sometimes.  I  charge  him  here  that  salaries 
are  paid  to  professors  for  staid  ideas,  not  way 
ward  emotions;  for  their  felicitous  learning, 
not  their  unhappy  leaning.  Yet  I  salute  him, 
too,  with  grovelling  respect  that  if  he  leaned 
perilously  toward  her,  he  leaned  like  the  Tower 
of  Pisa  —  without  falling :  a  human  classic,  rigid 
with  his  years. 

Turned  out  of  doors  to  enter  alone  the  rougher 
pathways  of  young  men  !  The  young  men  were 
already  there  with  their  rougher  pathways; 
for  a  throng  of  them  had  quickly  gathered  about 
her,  that  sure  and  favorable  sign.  As  one  of 
that  contesting  group  I  was  from  that  day  forth 


8  The  Heroine  in  Bronze 

none  too  gentle  in  trying  to  push  the  others  out 
of  the  way;  you  may  rest  satisfied  that  they 
greatly  rejoiced  to  push  me.  In  vain  for  all  of 
us  !  As  to  myself,  with  my  rustic  gifts  of  nature, 
she  had,  as  time  went  on,  not  been  disdainful 
exactly ;  to  the  contrary  she  had  distantly  scru 
tinized  these  as  though  she  might  so  far  be  rather 
well  pleased.  But  beyond  that  point  she  had 
demeaned  herself  as  one  who,  looking  you  sol 
emnly,  searchingly,  in  the  eyes,  shakes  her 
head  with  a  baffling  smile  and  demands  more, 
far  more,  immeasurably  more.  Thus  between 
her  and  me  life  had  for  some  time  been  at  a 
standstill,  —  at  least  love  had,  —  all  because  I 
had  not  the  needful  gifts  to  scatter  at  her  feet ; 
and  when  love  stands  still  and  life  goes  on,  the 
two  perforce  soon  get  too  far  apart. 

Please  do  not  admonish  me  that  love  is  not 
to  be  won  by  gifts.  Love  is  not  to  be  won  with 
anything  else.  There  is  never  any  question 
between  any  two  but  the  same  question : 
whether  one  must  needs  surrender  one's  self  to 
another  in  exchange  for  what  one's  desire  can 
not  do  without.  The  barter  may  be  very  low, 


The  Parting  9 

the  barter  may  be  very  high;  but  it  is  always 
barter,  barter,  barter.  All  our  sublimities  even 
have  to  go  to  the  highest  bidder  in  the  market 
place  of  ideals ;  we  trade  in  our  souls  as  we  sell 
apples  for  laces  and  wines  for  shoes. 

This  was  the  exact  ground  for  my  present 
hope  that  the  story  might  bring  me  nearer  the 
end  of  my  toilsome,  wearisome  journey  toward 
her  heart.  It  was  the  best  gift  I  had  yet  been 
able  to  carry  to  her,  for  it  was  the  best  proof  of 
what  I  myself  was  that  very  morning;  and  of 
course  what  I  was  that  morning  was  proof  in 
its  turn  of  what  I  had  been  all  the  mornings  of 
my  life.  I  hoped,  therefore,  that  she  would 
accept  it  as  the  first  real  token  of  what,  with 
added  years,  I  might  become  in  my  profession 
—  I,  aged  enough  for  a  full-grown  lover,  but  not 
mature  enough  for  a  full-grown  author. 

In  truth,  of  late,  after  some  tenderer  partings 
I  had  left  her,  persuaded  that  at  heart  she  had 
already  accepted  me  as  a  lover  and  was  holding 
back  only  because  the  lover  of  some  twenty-two 
years  could  furnish  her  no  assurance  of  what 
he  might  be  accomplishing  as  a  man  at  thirty- 


io  The  Heroine  in  Bronze 

five.  She,  planning  prudently  and  proudly 
far  ahead,  was  considering  whether  by  that 
time  or  at  some  earlier  or  later  time  she  might 
not  find  herself  bound  for  life  to  a  man  who  was 
neither  a  lover  nor  anything  else.  Alas,  those 
women :  can  there  be  many  of  them  ! 

I  exulted  in  this  challenge  of  hers :  I  desired 
that  I  be  challenged  to  nothing  less.  But  my 
difficulty  was  that  I  could  not  outstrip  time,  I 
could  not  advance  more  rapidly  than  nature 
herself.  The  proof  of  what  I  could  do  in  my  pro 
fession  must  be  unfolded  little  by  little  —  piece 
by  piece  —  with  sweat  and  toil  —  through  defeat 
often  —  through  patience  and  consecration  al 
ways.  I  could  no  more  drive  my  mind  through 
the  wall  of  future  years,  and  drag  from  beyond 
them  the  deeds  that  belonged  there,  than  a  man, 
standing  at  the  eastern  base  of  a  mountain, 
could  thrust  his  arm  through  the  mountain  and 
gather  gold  on  its  western  slope. 

She  knew  this ;  and  there  was  some  beautiful 
justice  in  her ;  and  I  think  as  she  pondered  her 
perfectly  natural  caution  and  my  perfectly 
natural  helplessness  to  satisfy  it,  I  think  that 


The  Parting  n 

under  the  leading  of  her  heart  —  though  she  had 
spoken  no  word  about  this  —  she  had  given 
way  far  enough  to  narrow  her  demand  to  a  single 
requirement :  I  must  at  least  show  one  sign, 
one  valid,  solid,  sweeping  sign,  that  I  would  carry 
off  in  my  profession  some  due  share  of  its  honors 
and  not  soon  after  marriage  begin  to  drain  to 
ward  a  wife  the  long  dark  sewer  of  a  husband's 
failures. 

Let  me  put  this  matter  in  yet  another  way. 
It  is  very  important  and  I  wish  it  to  be  made 
perfectly  clear.  Therefore  I  shall  employ  a  kind 
of  parable  of  the  fields  because  I  like  their 
language  best,  the  simple  honest  forthright 
speech  of  the  fields.  She  did  not  require,  then, 
that  at  this  outset  of  my  career  I  should  lead 
her  as  to  some  mountain-top  from  which  she 
could  descry  the  distant  gold  of  my  autumn 
harvest ;  she  did  not  even  ask  for  the  sight  of 
the  full-stalked  summer  green.  But  she  did 
demand  that  I  reach  down  where  I  stood  on  my 
mountain  of  hope  and  pluck  for  her  a  handful  of 
vigorous  young  wheat-blades  as  they  show  in 
early  spring  the  promise  of  the  ended  season. 


12  The  Heroine  in  Bronze 

Then  perhaps  she  would  be  ready  to  let  me  know 
whether  upon  this  evidence  she  would  wed 
April  —  and  risk  September. 

This  morning  I  believed  that  I  had  in  my 
hand  April's  promise  • —  my  new  story,  my 
first  masterwork.  The  thought  robed  the  world 
with  joy.  This  day  might  bring  about  my  be 
trothal.  At  once  it  became  solemn  and  beautiful 
beyond  all  my  days. 

As  I  sprang  out  of  bed  with  the  belief  that 
happy  things  were  just  ahead  and  that  I  might 
prepare  myself  for  them,  I  was  not  even  content 
to  take  my  bath  in  one  of  those  scant  allowances 
of  porcelain  which  are  sometimes  assigned  to  the 
less  important  tenants  in  a  sumptuous  New  York 
apartment  building.  Too  poor  myself  to  keep  a 
valet,  I  was  rich  enough  to  retain  something 
better  —  my  faithful  servitor  Imagination :  ever 
at  my  elbow  to  do  for  me  what  I  could  not  do  for 
myself;  its  duty  being  to  better  my  lot  in  the 
world  as  often  as  I  wished  and  as  much  as  I 
might  crave.  I  now  invoked  Imagination ;  and 
then  I  took  my  bath  as  one  who,  with  an  eager 
start,  leaps  at  the  surf's  edge  from  some  high 


The  Parting  13 

rock,  soft  to  his  bare  feet  with  living  moss  and 
fragrant  to  him  with  wild  rose  and  pine  —  as 
one  who  with  strong  young  limbs  leaps  from 
such  a  rock,  clear-bodied  in  the  morning  light, 
and  dives  deep  .into  blue  ocean. 

From  this  imaginary  bath  rather  than  the 
actual  one,  this  boundless  primeval  bath,  I 
emerged  dripping  and  aglow  with  its  cold  purity. 

When  I  descended  to  the  street,  ten  floors  down, 
I  found  that  my  earlier  fancied  union  with  the 
sea  was  succeeded  by  a  kind  of  reality.  With  the 
deep  breathing  which  is  instinctive  as  we  step 
into  the  open  air,  the  smell  of  fresh  brine  swept 
into  my  nostrils;  its  moisture  began  to  settle 
on  my  moustache  and  face;  the  ripple  of  it 
seemed  to  pass  into  the  full-running  channels  of 
my  blood.  For  during  the  night  a  vast  vapor 
from  the  bay  had  overspread  the  city ;  and  now 
this  vapor  hung  suspended  like  some  finest 
dew-cloth  spun  far  out  on  silver  and  azure  sea : 
a  vast  dew-cloth,  floating,  drifting,  invisible  in  a 
crystal  ether.  And  falling  through  this  cool, 
clear,  dew-wet  air  came  the  splendors  of  the 
morning  sun. 


14  The  Heroine  in  Bronze 

I  could  but  stand  still  in  the  street  for  a  mo 
ment  to  drink  it  all  in,  to  acknowledge  the  glory 
of  it  with  my  adoring  soul,  my  thrilled  body. 
What  a  masterpiece  of  a  day !  And  it  was  the 
birthday  of  what  I  hoped  would  be  a  masterwork 
in  my  hand.  I  made  good  omen  for  myself  out 
of  the  benign  aspects  of  the  universe ;  I  let  my 
mind  dwell  waveringly  upon  man's  old  fond  be 
lief  that  his  fairer  deed  finds  a  fairer  day. 

Then,  thus  assured  that  all  within  and  without 
was  auspicious,  I  started  eagerly  across  the  city 
in  a  southeasterly  direction  toward  her  home. 


CHAPTER  II 

HE  lived  within  less  than  half  a 
block  of  Fifth  Avenue,  that  long, 
hard,  stately,  palace-crowded,  dia- 
mond-bedusted,  world-weary  road 
—  the  Via  Dolorosa  of  great  cities. 
And  her  residence  was  not  far  southward  from 
Central  Park  —  that  Arcady  of  Nature  in  town : 
slopes  of  greensward  for  dances  of  the  children 
of  the  earth ;  thickets  for  the  nests  and  songs  of 
the  children  of  the  air ;  turf  scattered  plenteously 
over  with  dews  and  rains  —  jewels  that  do  not 
fret  the  fingers  or  the  mind;  trees  with  wild 
thorns  which  pierce  no  brow,  such  thorns  as  may 
strike  through  the  down  of  pillows ;  quiet  waters 
into  which  the  stars  flash  —  surer  lights  to  go 
by  than  any  that  mirrors  can  reflect  from  chande 
liers  ;  paths  that  lead  to  shade  for  young  lovers 
who  grow  faint  in  the  sun ;  and  many  a  resting- 
place  for  the  worker  and  for  the  old  who  are  past 
their  work. 

is 


1 6  The  Heroine  in  Bronze 

Thus  Fifth  Avenue  and  Central  Park  were  the 
figurative  boundaries  of  her  existence,  the  fron 
tiers  of  the  two  worlds  of  her  spirit  —  society  and 
nature.  She  dwelt  near  both  worlds;  and  she 
entered  both ;  she  entered  both  freely  and  re 
turned  from  both  —  free ;  too  free  for  my  peace  ! 

From  this  description  you  will  understand  that 
her  home, — that  is,  her  father's  residence,  over 
which  she  presided,  her  famous  mother  being 
dead  many  years, — you  will  understand  that  her 
home  stood  in  perhaps  the  most  beautiful,  the 
most  celebrated,  and  the  most  fashionable  quar 
ter  of  the  city.  A  house  that  can  stand  where  it 
stood  has  to  be  a  strong  house. 

It  showed  its  strength  still  further  by  the  prom 
inence  it  took  in  a  street  of  more  modern  houses 
whose  partition  walls  conjoined.  In  the  long 
block  of  these  to  the  east  and  to  the  west,  it, 
much  the  oldest  of  them,  stood  apart  in  its  own 
yard.  And  it  stood  there  with  authority.  The 
others  wore  the  air  of  having  won  a  shallow 
foothold  by  rude  and  hasty  force;  they  sug 
gested  that  they  were  achievements  in  worldly 
competition.  Here  and  there  a  door-step  seemed 


The  Parting  17 

ready  to  fawn  at  the  right  footstep  or  to  insult 
the  wrong  one;  here  and  there  windows  looked 
out  at  the  world,  prepared  to  smirk  or  to  frown ; 
and  plainly  certain  chimney-tops  were  too  rigid 
to  bow  or  too  obsequious  to  do  so  —  like  hats 
quickly  jerked  off  when  the  mightier  pass.  But 
her  home  reigned  amid  these  with  the  quietness 
of  unconcern,  as  if  knowing  that  its  foundations 
were  built  below  the  crumbling  reefs  of  old  and 
new,  below  the  passing  and  repassing  tides  of 
New  York  names  and  fashions  and  fortunes.  It 
did  not  so  much  appear  to  stand  in  the  city  as  to 
grow  in  the  soil,  on  one  of  the  last  visible  ves 
tiges  of  lower  Manhattan  Island ;  and  you  re 
sponded  to  it  as  you  might  to  an  unrulable  oak 
which  knows  itself  to  be  legal  heir  to  its  share  of 
the  forest  and  demands  space  for  the  freedom 
of  its  boughs. 

It  affected  me  powerfully  because  it  did  stand 
aloof.  The  rows  of  buildings  soldered  together, 
wall  by  wall,  annoyed  me,  a  green  country  boy, 
much  as  if  I  had  seen  a  neighborhood  of  farmers 
pinioned  together  by  their  shoulders.  I  could 
no  more  have  wished  my  home,  when  I  should 


1 8  The  Heroine  in  Bronze 

have  one,  to  be  welded  to  any  other  man's  home 
than  I  could  have  planned  that  my  ribs  should 
be  nailed  to  his  ribs.  Often,  as  I  looked  at  solid 
blocks  of  houses,  I  twisted  and  writhed  to  get 
loose  with  sun  and  air  and  space  for  life,  growth, 
independence.  This  house  satisfied  my  craving  : 
it  flourished  unsupported ;  nothing  else  held  it 
up ;  it  seemed  to  say  to  the  others :  I  stand  on 
my  foundation,  stand  on  yours.  If  you  cannot 
stand  alone,  fall  alone. 

And  its  humanized  countenance  !  Have  you 
in  remembrance  at  the  moment  some  strong, 
middle-aged,  vanished  face,  in  the  wrinkles  of 
which  lurked  gentle  humors  and  moods  of  fun, 
but  over  which  had  settled  one  expression  of 
mellowed  dignity  before  the  world  ?  This,  for 
me,  was  quite  the  hallowed  eloquence  of  its 
look.  By  some  train  of  suggestion,  possibly  by 
some  resemblance  it  bore  to  another  house  now 
dim  and  distant,  and  lost  to  me  with  those  who 
once  dwelt  there,  the  first  sight  of  it  brought  back 
the  memory  of  a  middle-aged  face  —  the  most 
loved  face  in  the  world  —  strong,  but  with  inno 
cent  humors  peeping  from  behind  the  ravages 


The  Parting  19 

of  the  years,  and  resting  over  it  one  expression 
of  brooding  tenderness,  a  kind  of  indestructible 
peace. 

Into  this  mystery  of  remembrance  and  re 
semblance  I  cannot  go  deeper  here.  I  only 
know  that  from  the  first  I  liked  the  house 
because  of  earlier  things  in  my  own  heart; 
because  she  had  been  born  there  and  had  passed 
her  life  there,  with  absences  for  sessions  at  col 
lege  and  for  summers  of  travel ;  because  it  still 
moulded  her  as  its  pliant  mistress ;  and  because, 
in  fine,  I  was  making  love  to  her  in  it  and  trying 
to  entice  her  out  of  it.  Beyond  question  this 
was  why  I  loved  it  most :  that  I  was  trying  to 
induce  her  to  leave  it. 

Please  give  some  attention  to  details.  A 
broad  strip  of  yard  extended  along  the  eastern 
and  the  western  side,  and  there  was  a  broader 
strip  at  the  rear.  The  stone  steps  in  front 
descended  to  the  street,  but  even  on  each  side 
of  the  steps  there  was  a  narrow  strip  of  yard. 
At  one  boundary  of  the  enclosure  there  was  a 
driveway  entrance  to  the  stables,  and  a  servants' 
gate;  and  here  also  around  the  feet  of  the 


2O  The  Heroine  in  Bronze 

horses  and  the  dogs,  of  the  coachman  and  the 
footman,  of  the  butler  and  the  valet,  of  the 
maids  and  the  cook,  even  around  the  issuing  feet 
of  these,  there  were  little  plots  of  priceless  green. 
Each  of  those  tiny  expanses  of  grass,  if  valued 
in  terms  of  the  Wall  Street  Mint,  would  have 
been  as  a  small  field  of  the  cloth  of  gold.  Here 
was  a  family  that  held  on  to  the  common  grass 
and  let  the  commoner  gold  go. 

This  grass,  too,  ensnared  my  affections.  For 
it  here  becomes  intrusive  to  inform  you  that 
New  York  City  is  not  my  birthplace.  I  came 
from  a  rich,  wide-rolling,  pastoral  region  several 
hundred  miles  away ;  and  I  had  dwelt  on  a  farm 
until  I  was  grown,  getting  my  education  from  a 
small  college  town  a  few  miles  distant.  It  was 
only  two  years  before  this  that  I  had  made  my 
solitary  way  to  the  vast  city,  —  America's  Lon 
don  —  a  youth,  a  stranger,  almost  without 
money,  without  acquaintances,  without  in 
fluence,  but  with  the  determination  to  succeed 
in  one  of  the  most  difficult  of  professions  with 
out  any  man's  aid.  I  had  not  succeeded 
amazingly,  and  I  was  yet  homesick.  As  I 


The  Parting  21 

walked  about  the  city  —  there  being  little  else 
to  do  —  I  carried  with  me  a  pair  of  eyes  which 
alighted  gladly  upon  any  verdure.  Any  mere 
florist's  window  in  spring  decorated  with  boughs 
brought  up  torturing  memories  of  native  woods 
far  away,  beginning  to  bud  and  blossom.  Any 
solitary  tree  on  a  sidewalk  invited  me,  a  summer 
day,  to  throw  myself  down  under  its  round 
shade,  look  up  at  the  infinite  blue,  and  try  to 
dream  again  the  things  that  once  were  so  easy 
when  they  were  distant,  but  were  now  so  diffi 
cult,  being  near. 

A  more  noteworthy  feature  still  of  this  much- 
studied  home  of  hers. 

With  my  habit  of  keeping  eyes  wide  open  on 
human  life,  I  had  made  a  small  discovery  in  my 
limited  travels ;  and  I  always  go  in  for  my  own 
discoveries.  In  some  cities,  as  Washington  and 
Boston  and  Baltimore,  where  the  early  influence 
of  English  architecture  was  decisive,  a  high 
stone  wall,  after  the  old  English  custom  of 
aristocratic  town  houses,  separates  the  family 
from  the  world.  I  had  been  much  used  to  such 
walls,  even  in  my  little  pastoral  Southern  town 


22  The  Heroine  in  Bronze 

with  its  pure  English  tradition.  But  in  New 
York  City,  where  the  Dutch  did  most  of  the 
building  and  the  British  chiefly  camped,  —  and 
decamped,  —  this  Anglo-Saxon  stone  wall  does 
not  stand.  Aristocratic  usage  has  adopted  the 
iron  fence  barbed  at  the  top  —  an  array  of 
black  spears  in  front  of  the  enclosure.  If 
further  seclusion  is  desired  for  the  grounds,  a 
hedge  is  planted  inside  this  fence :  of  privet  or 
of  arbor-vitae  or  of  hemlock  or  of  rhododendron. 
There  was  such  a  fence,  such  a  hedge,  in  front 
of  her  residence.  The  passer  could  not  see  the 
ground  premises.  But  over  the  top  of  this 
hedge  he  might  have  noticed  that  one  entire 
wall  of  the  house  was  covered  with  a  mighty 
vine  which  made  its  way  upward,  in  masses  of 
foliage  thickly  looped,  about  the  windows.  On 
an  October  day  I  have  seen  that  wall  of  the  house 
glow  dark  red  like  an  oak  in  the  autumn  woods. 
And  late  one  afternoon,  when  there  was  a  blue 
haze  in  the  city  air  and  a  gray  sky  and  a  chilli 
ness,  as  I  walked  past  with  my  eyes  dubiously 
turned  in  that  direction,  I  caught  sight  of  her 
at  one  of  her  windows,  standing  quite  still 


The  Parting  23 

there,  framed  in  the  dark  red  autumn  picture 
and  looking  down  into  the  yard.  That  vision 
of  her  head  and  face  with  its  gold  and  its  fair 
ness  was  as  an  April  glimpse  of  daffodils  and 
lilies  —  brought  forward  to  the  winter's  edge. 

"At  this  moment,"  I  mused,  ill  at  ease  about 
my  own  case,  "she  may  be  settling  the  fate  of 
some  one  of  us  !  Let  her  be  thanked,  at  least, 
for  being  thoughtful  about  it !" 

A  more  curious  person,  glancing  over  the  hedge 
and  fence,  could  further  have  seen  the  tops  of 
evergreens  and  the  roof  of  a  vine-covered  arbor. 
He  might  have  thought  such  a  grotto  a  conces 
sion  to  the  artificial,  with  no  more  natural 
right  to  be  there  than  a  Swiss  chalet  for  Marie 
Antoinette  had  artistic  warrant  to  be  trans 
planted  to  the  forest  of  Versailles.  It  to  him 
may  have  stood  for  the  same  species  of  mock 
rusticity  that  one  finds  in  a  landscape  of  Aubus- 
son  tapestry  or  in  the  lawn  of  a  Watteau  fan. 
But  I  am  sure  that  it  was  a  very  simple  and  sin 
cere  place  to  her,  because  the  yard  had  been 
her  mother's  plan,  she  told  me ;  and  her  mother 
had  been  reared  in  the  country  and  had  never 


24  The  Heroine  in  Bronze 

been  weaned  from  it.  I  am  sure  there  was 
naught  artificial  in  it  to  her,  but  a  double  ten 
derness  for  this  reason;  and  I  certainly  know 
that  I  myself  found  out  something  very  sincere 
in  her  nature  from  that  very  arbor.  For  after  I 
had  established  my  acquaintanceship  well  enough 
to  be  taken  out  of  doors,  one  day  she  and  I  were 
walking  there.  It  was  sober  twilight,  and  low 
overhead  I  suddenly  heard  the  notes  of  a  grackle 
alighting  in  the  foliage.  A  few  minutes  before 
I  had  recognized  the  call  of  a  starling  as  it  de 
scended  out  of  the  darkening  air.  I  turned 
toward  her :  — 

"Birds  must  drop  in  here  for  the  night,"  I  said. 
"As  they  migrate  in  spring  and  migrate  in  autumn 
and  make  a  great  encampment  of  Central  Park, 
sometimes  the  thin  edge  of  a  flying  squadron  must 
drop  down  here  to  tent  for  a  night  and  a  day." 

"They  do  stop,  here,"  she  replied,  evidently 
glad.  "Sometimes  from  my  window  I  hear 
them  as  they  flutter  in  after  dark;  and  some 
times  I  hear  them  utter  their  farewells  as  they 
leave  at  dawn.  Sometimes  one  may  linger  for 
a  few  days." 


The  Parting  25 

Then  with  a  change  of  tone  quite  natural  to 
her  she  added,  with  her  eyes  on  the  ground :  — 

"We  are  all  birds  of  passage  —  we  human 
beings.  From  somewhere  —  to  somewhere. 
Either  flying  from  dawn  and  spring  toward 
winter  and  night;  or  from  night  and  winter 
toward  spring  and  dawn.  I  think,  toward 
Perpetual  Spring." 

There  sounded  the  grave  note  in  her.  I  had 
heard  it  first  in  her  Commencement  essay, 
and  I  shall  never  forget  how  it  startled  me. 
She  there  that  June  morning,  in  the  great  audi 
ence  hall  of  her  college,  before  that  audience  of 
old  age  so  reverential  to  youth  on  such  days, 
with  that  bold  note  of  the  immortal  in  her  girl 
hood  most  musically,  fearlessly,  uttered  it  as  from 
the  hilltops  of  life's  morning.  Shall  I  ever 
forget,  either,  how  that  night,  when  I  was  at  my 
own  prayers,  this  spiritual  flight  of  hers  already 
toward  eternity  drew  her  mystically  beside  me, 
as  though  some  day  we  should  be  together  — 
we  two  —  Donald  Clough,  Muriel  Dunstan  ? 

But  do  not  misunderstand  about  her  serious 
ness  ;  it  was  not  gloominess.  Across  the  bright 


26  The  Heroine  in  Bronze 

field  of  her  consciousness  lay  that  one  slender 
dark  bar  —  just  that  one.  Perhaps  a  refrain 
of  pathos  caught  from  her  mother  whom  she 
vividly  remembered  and  whose  life  had  ended 
almost  before  girlhood  itself.  All  the  rest  of 
her  was  luminous  with  joy  and  humor.  And 
woe  to  you  if  you  ever  ran  your  head  rashly  into 
the  general  blaze  of  that  humor  !  The  uncer 
tainty  of  when  it  might  make  its  appearance,  and 
the  certainty  that  it  was  always  there  ready  to 
appear  !  It  got  to  be  a  kind  of  terror  to  every 
man  of  us  !  Not  one  of  us  in  love  with  her  but 
felt  tremors  for  this  reason.  No  man  need  be 
afraid  of  anything  he  can  fight;  but  how  can 
a  man  attack  a  girl's  laughter  at  him  !  It  bowls 
him  over,  once  and  for  all.  He  may  rise  again, 
smiling,  to  face  death ;  not  to  face  her. 

As  further  bearing  on  this  subject  of  her  humor 
—  and  also  as  still  harping  on  the  house  ! 

After  the  yard-turf  had  stretched  rearward  a 
space  it  suddenly  turned  uncontrollably  gay 
and  burst  into  a  garden.  Not  quite  an  Italian 
garden,  not  quite  an  American  garden,  not 
quite  anything  but  itself.  There  were  flower- 


Tlie  Parting  27 

beds,  evergreens,  and  honeysuckles ;  and  through 
these  went  a  little  ramble  lined  with  dwarf -box. 
It  was  a  dwarf  ramble.  But  then  there  are 
short  rambles  that  can  be  long  and  long  rambles 
that  can  be  short:  there  is  no  criterion  for 
rambles  —  it  depends  upon  the  ramblers.  This 
ramble  led  to  the  remotest  corner  of  the  enclos 
ure,  where  there  was  an  iron  filigree  seat  painted 
gray — an  iron  seat,  cold  and  gray,  very  iron,  very 
cold,  very  gray.  The  world  calls  such  a  con 
trivance  a  settee ;  I  called  this  one  a  seat-two. 
To  my  limited  knowledge  it  always  did  seat 
two;  and  there  could  have  been  no  calculable 
motive  for  any  one  to  sit  there  alone :  unless 
to  enjoy  self -misery,  as  people  sometimes  do. 
But  why  bother  about  self -misery  when  you  are 
free  to  enjoy  other  people's  ?  I  repeat  that  no 
one  would  have  chosen  to  sit  there  alone.  For 
in  addition  to  the  attractive  qualities  already 
enumerated,  there  arose  from  the  four  legs  of 
this  settee  four  iron  grape-vines  that  trailed 
themselves  across  the  bottom  and  up  the  back, 
profusely  laden  with  bunches  of  very  uncrush- 
able,  unbacchanalian  grapes.  They  prodded  a 


28  The  Heroine  in  Bronze 

man  in  the  back  and  ribs  like  mailed  fists ;  and 
they  administered  the  peace  of  cobblestones 
to  him  in  other  directions. 

This  wanton  piece  of  outdoor  machinery 
was  arranged  behind  shrubs  and  vines  —  not 
artfully.  When  one  of  her  suitors  sat  there 
with  her,  he  may  not  have  been  arranged 
artfully,  but  he  made  that  impression ;  he  con 
veyed  that  idea  to  the  hostile  beholder.  I 
suspect  that  he  made  that  impression  upon 
her. 

For  though  still  a  youth,  I  have  long  been  a 
student  of  human  nature,  particularly  of  the 
human  nature  of  the  sex  that  possesses  nearly 
all  of  it.  Very  old  ladies  and  middle-aged  ladies 
are  beyond  me — in  time  and  in  depth  :  what  they 
are  up  to  I  shall  never  know.  But  the  result 
of  my  study  of  the  unaccountable  beings  of  my 
own  age  is  the  belief  that  each  of  them  puts  her 
suitors  to  some  same  test.  The  suitors  may 
never  perceive  what  the  test  is :  the  investiga- 
tress  knows  admirably.  And  so  far,  I  am  sure, 
every  girl  is  for  weavings  by  day  and  unweavings 
by  night,  as  the  original  Penelope.  Of  course 


The  Parting  29 

you  do  not  fall  into  the  error  of  thinking  there 
was  never  but  one  Penelope,  and  she  a  Greek  and 
a  married  woman.  The  United  States  to-day 
is  well  peopled  with  young  Penelopes  who  have 
never  been  to  Greece  and  have  never  heard  of 
the  Ulysses :  but  they  expect  to  hear  of  hus 
bands  !  The  middle-aged  classic  Penelope  un 
wove  for  a  return ;  the  youthful  classic  American 
weaves  for  an  arrival. 

I  am  sure  that  this  settee  was  her  test :  one 
of  her  weavings  —  or  castings.  The  caldron 
of  the  open  sky  there  stewed  the  suitor  to  sim 
plicity;  that  misshapen  crucible  of  torture 
grilled  him  to  the  bones  of  candor.  I  know  that 
one  afternoon  when  I  called  on  her  and  was  in 
vited  to  go  out  into  the  garden,  as  I  drew  near 
that  farthest  corner,  I  met  one  of  the  suitors 
hurrying  away;  he  looked  shrivelled,  juiceless, 
drawn.  There  was  iron  to  the  rear  of  him  - 
but  he  had  the  iron  in  him  —  the  spear  of  her 
last  word.  I  could  almost  see  where  it  had  gone 
through.  I  stepped  quite  to  one  side  of  the 
ramble  that  he  might  have  the  whole  road  of 
suffering  to  himself  and  wished  him  joy  in 


30  The  Heroine  in  Bronze 

his  ruin.      Thenceforth  I  called  the  bench  the 
purgatory  of  the  Last  Judgment. 

For  me  it  possessed  fewer  terrors  than  any 
other  spot  of  her  domain,  because  I  belong  out  of 
doors  and  speak  best  in  the  open.  The  worst 
impressions  I  had  ever  made  upon  her  had  been 
attributable  to  the  house.  Never  have  I  feared 
my  species;  but  I,  a  country  boy,  long  could 
be  awed  by  New  York  furniture.  And  there 
was  furniture  in  her  parlors  that  for  a  time 
nearly  deprived  me  of  the  natural  use  of  my  limbs 
and  my  intelligence.  The  first  wretched,  clogged, 
futile,  lying  words  of  love  I  ever  spoke  to  her  were 
mumbled  at  her  as  I  sat  in  a  gilt  chair  with  an 
embroidered  fox  at  my  back  in  full  chase  of  an 
embroidered  goose.  She  faced  me  on  a  gilt 
sofa  with  what  at  her  back  I  know  not  —  cer 
tainly  not  Sour  Grapes;  and  she  sat  under  a 
large  picture  known  as  Botticelli's  Spring  —  so 
she  had  informed  me  upon  my  anxious  inquiry. 
But  if  that  was  the  best  that  Botticelli  ever  knew 
of  spring,  he  must  have  had  a  queer  four  seasons 
in  his  native  country ;  and  he  must  have  been  used 
to  see  queer  people:  it  is  not  remarkable  that 


The  Parting  31 

he  should  have  painted  them  wandering  about 
unemployed,  puzzled,  and  low-spirited;  and 
tempered  in  their  unmannerly  garments  neither 
to  the  wind,  the  Lord,  nor  the  tailor.  Ah,  no  ! 
Had  she  and  I  only  been  out  in  the  real  spring  — 
on  some  warm,  grassy  slope  of  sun  and  shade ; 
near  some  wild  grape  whose  blossoms  scented 
the  golden  air;  with  a  brook  faintly  heard 
running  through  banks  of  mint  and  violets; 
and  with  the  silken  rustling  of  doves'  wings 
audible  amid  the  white  blossoms  of  wild  plum 
trees. 

One  last  most  important  thing  to  tell  you 
about  this  interminable  yard  !  But  feel  yourself 
honored  by  being  taken  even  into  her  yard  if  it 
brings  you  closer  to  her.  Perhaps  you  would 
prefer  that  I  should  begin  to  say  less  and  she 
begin  to  say  more.  But  I  speak  while  I  may. 
When  she  appears  upon  the  scene  and  begins 
to  speak  for  herself,  I  shall  vanish  and  speak 
for  nobody. 

A  wall  shut  the  yard  in  from  the  neighbor 
yard  on  one  side,  and  where  this  wall  met  the 
front  fence  of  iron  spears  there  was  formed  a 


32  The  Heroine  in  Bronze 

shaded  nook.  Perhaps  in  the  whole  city  there 
was  not  an  outdoor  cranny  where  one  who 
wished  to  read  alone  could  be  so  undisturbed. 
Within  a  few  yards  of  the  passing  world  of 
realities,  New  York  realities,  you  could  ensconce 
yourself  there,  forget  your  surroundings,  and 
make  your  journey  to  the  ideal.  If  you  had 
read  in  a  story  up  to  some  point  where  you 
must  stop  to  think,  there  was  not  a  more  favor 
able  spot  in  which  to  indulge  that  mood  of  dream 
ing  and  longing  which  it  is  the  duty  of  every 
right  kind  of  book  to  bring  on. 

The  wall  forming  that  nook  of  the  yard  is 
heavily  covered  with  old  ivy  —  not  the  Gray's 
Elegy  kind  of  ivy,  none  of  that ;  that  does  well 
enough  for  bards.  In  this  nook  there  was  a 
marble  seat  after  the  manner  of  the  ancient 
Greeks  and  Alma  Tadema.  Within  arm's  reach 
of  the  seat,  at  one  end,  flourished  one  of  her 
mother's  rose-bushes,  which  puts  forth  in  the 
month  of  June.  Never  shall  I  forget  that  rose 
bush  or  a  quiet  twilight  when  it  flowered  there 
and  when  Destiny  stood  behind  it  and  touched  a 
blossom. 


The  Parting  33 

Here,  then,  in  this  strong,  proud,  gentle,  old 
mansion,  in  this  yard  with  its  seclusion  and  ram 
ble  and  vines  and  seats,  she  lived  with  a  house 
hold  of  four  members  Her  father,  whom  she 
playfully  called  the  Commodore,  was  a  banker, 
a  clubman,  and  a  patriot  prominent  in  yachting 
circles.  He  had  had  something  to  do  with  the 
international  challenges  —  not  by  way  of  wind 
and  wave,  but  of  mast  and  sail ;  and  he  was  more 
concerned  over  the  hardy  adventurous  Britisher 
who  might  some  day  lift  The  America's  cup  than 
over  the  hardy  adventurous  American  who  might 
sooner  lift  his  daughter.  There  were  two 
younger  brothers  off  at  their  New  England 
college,  but  at  home  for  riotous  intervals.  There 
was  an  aunt,  the  Commodore's  sister,  a  divorced 
dowager,  who  declared  dividends  on  her  alimony. 
She  declared  a  great  many  more  things  than 
dividends.  At  my  first  dinner  there,  being 
her  alimentary  attache,  for  the  occasion,  I  re 
ceived  some  kind  of  notion  that  she  consisted 
chiefly  of  diamonds,  opinions,  and  a  succession  of 
silver  forks.  Her  opinions  were  to  be  classed 
rather  with  forks  than  with  diamonds.  They 


34  The  Heroine  in  Bronze 

did  not  flash;  but  they  were  solid  and  heavy; 
and  she  took  them  up  and  laid  them  down,  one 
by  one,  during  the  routine  of  courses,  and  made 
them  generally  useful  to  herself  while  feeding.  I 
am  sure  that  her  ideas  were  forks.  She,  like  the 
Commodore,  was  of  aquatic  habits;  but  she 
went  all  the  way  across  and  inhabited  the  marshy 
watering-places  of  the  Old  World.  I  called  her 
the  Paludal  Aunt ;  and  I  still  suspect  that  she  was 
web-footed,  and  that  if  she  had  flapped  her  arms 
briskly  enough,  she  could  have  walked  across  a 
good-sized  pond  without  wetting  her  ankles. 

O  Temper  a !    O  Mores !    0  Nuptia  Americana  !    O 
Paludes  I 

And  thus  with  all  that  perfection  of  worldly 
estate,  family  ties  scarcely  existed  in  the  house 
hold  —  a  breakdown  of  the  home-life  in  the  too 
common  New  York  way.  The  Commodore  was 
absorbed  in  his  banking,  his  clubs,  his  yachts,  the 
traditions  of  The  America.  I  was  not  unaware, 
however,  that  he  kept  a  landward  eye  on  me :  as 
I  kept  a  weather  eye  on  him.  The  brothers  were 
given  over  to  their  athletics,  their  studies,  their 
fraternities;  to  their  getting  tapped  and  to 


The  Parting  35 

doing  some  tapping  for  themselves.  The  aunt 
diverted  herself  with  waters  and  foods  and  divi 
dends  and  declarations.  And  thus  she,  daughter, 
sister,  niece,  and  youthful  mistress  of  them  all, 
was  left  much  to  herself.  Not  like  any  of  them, 
somewhat  of  a  stranger  among  them. 

Society,  with  its  quick  perception  of  what  is 
fresh  and  charming,  had  advanced  hungrily  upon 
her  from  all  directions  during  that  first  year  of 
her  appearance  in  it.  It  encircled  her  to  absorb 
her.  In  her  social  set  were  mothers  who  had 
known  her  mother ;  in  her  father's  set  were  men 
with  sons  dangerous  to  me  as  rivals.  Life  spread 
out  around  her  in  every  direction  for  her  to  walk 
a  rose  path  across  it  whither  she  would ;  and  al 
ways  at  the  boundary  waited  the  world's  best. 
Sometimes  at  night  the  whole  street  would  be 
blocked  with  the  splendid  motor  cars  and  older- 
fashioned  carriages  of  those  who  within  the  house 
rendered  tribute  to  her.  She  bore  her  honors 
gladly.  Yet  I  am  sure  that  the  deepest  call  of 
life  did  not  reach  her  either  from  her  family  or 
from  her  social  world. 

And  she  managed  her  responsibilities  so  well 


36  The  Heroine  in  Bronze 

that  she  contrived  to  reserve  days  when  the  house 
and  the  yard  were  left  to  quietness.  These  were 
the  days  for  which  I  watched  and  waited.  Then  I 
found  her  alone,  and  more  nearly  reached  her 
deepest  hidden  self.  Now  as  to  the  manner  in 
which  these  reserve  days  became  known  to  me, 
you  will  be  left  to  puzzle  that  out  for  yourself. 
But  cherish  the  observation  that  whenever  a 
pleasant  thing  is  a  secret  to  one  young  person,  it 
becomes  a  secret  to  another  young  person :  only 
the  old  must  have  learned  to  keep  their  secrets. 

An  occurrence  took  place  the  spring  of  that 
same  year  a  few  weeks  before  the  time  of  which  I 
write. 

It  was  about  eleven  o'clock,  a  brilliant  morning 
in  May:  a  day  when  youth  is  ready  to  drop 
work  and  laugh  and  dally.  The  red  blood  in  it 
belongs  to  the  blue  sky  and  the  golden  sun; 
it  would  willingly  throw  itself  down  beside  the 
first  wayside  temptation  and  give  a  hard  life 
time  for  an  hour  of  vagrant  joy. 

Being  in  that  quarter  of  the  city,  I  could  not 
resist  the  temptation  to  turn  my  steps  into  her 
street;  I  had  gone  thither  determined  not  to 


The  Parting  37 

resist.  As  I  reached  the  fence  with  its  hedge 
inside  I  stopped.  The  fragrance  of  the  garden 
was  wafted  out  to  me  on  the  sidewalk :  the  smell 
of  privet  blossoms,  the  aroma  of  boxboughs  and 
pine-buds ;  and  rising  from  under  the  hedge,  the 
odor  of  the  strong  moist  earth.  Recollection 
overcame  me  of  spring  days  in  my  country.  As 
though  I  were  one  cup  of  memory  I  filled  this 
cup  to  the  brim  with  draughts  from  her  hedge  and 
garden.  Then  the  cup  of  memory  plotted  a  little 
for  its  future.  The  street  was  quiet,  no  one 
near ;  my  audacious  behavior  could  not  scandal 
ize  social  conventions.  Placing  my  face  against 
the  hedge,  in  a  voice  pitched  not  to  be  heard 
through  the  public  atmosphere,  but  in  a  sheltered 
corner,  I  took  the  chance  and  murmured :  — 

"How  do  you  do?" 

I  heard  a  book  close  quickly,  and  I  heard 
laughter,  surprised,  amused  laughter  (though 
she  did  not  know  I  heard).  Then  she  replied  as 
though  she  had  not  laughed  and  in  a  voice  uncon 
sciously  lowered  to  go  through  hedges  only :  — 

"  Do  you  imagine  I  am  going  to  talk  to  you 
there  in  the  street  ?  " 


38  The  Heroine  in  Bronze 

"At  least,  that  is  one  remark !  A  non-com 
mittal  remark,  but  still  a  remark." 

"Why  don't  you  come  in  ? " 

"Another  remark  !     I  await  still  others." 

"There  will  not  be  any  others.  Only  the  one 
remark  —  why  don't  you  come  ?" 

"Well,  then,  I  do  not  wish  to  come  in." 

"At  least  that  is  frank  and  civil." 

"But  there  is  a  reason." 

"Is  the  reason  frank  and  civil  —  in  the  same 
way?" 

"The  reason  is  I  would  rather  talk  to  you 
through  a  hedge  —  this  one  time  !" 

"Why  through  the  hedge  ?" 

"It  reminds  me  of  old  pleasant  days  in  my 
country  and  of  a  happy  scene,  when  I  was  young, 
before  I  felt  the  weight  of  my  years." 

"  The  weight  of  your  years  must  be  very 
crushing!  What  had  the  hedge  to  do  with  the 
happy  scene?  " 

"  It  was  a  calm  summer  day  in  my  sweet- 
breathed  land.  There  was  a  hedge  of  black 
berry  bushes  growing  along  the  fence.  The 
berries  hung  soft  like  velvet;  shining  like  jet; 


The  Parting  39 

cooled  by  the  thick  shade.  They  melted  on  the 
tongue  in  purple  juice  —  the  iron  of  the  vine. 
I  was  one  side  of  the  fence,  he  on  the  other. 
We  were  picking  the  berries  for  the  jam  of  our 
mothers,  but  our  mothers  knew  that  Nature's 
buckets  would  be  filled  before  theirs.  That  is 
all.  We  were  picking  them  and  eating  them, 
and  we  were  talking  through  the  hedge ;  we  were 
boys;  we  had  no  care;  it  was  a  happy  time." 

She  did  not  reply  at  once,  and  when  her  voice 
reached  me,  it  came  freighted  with  what  I 
believed  to  be  the  deep  call  of  life  to  her ;  from 
a  world  older  yet  younger  than  the  city :  — 

"  I  wish  I  were  away  out  in  the  country  and 
it  were  a  sweet  day  and  I  were  picking  and  eat 
ing  blackberries  along  a  fence  and  some  one  I 
loved  were  talking  to  me!" 

"  That  can  be  arranged  for  you.  I  can  ar 
range  it  this  summer." 

"  Now  that  is  very  kind  of  you!  Very  con 
siderate!  But  don't  you  think  I  should  rather 
arrange  it  for  myself?  Perhaps  it  might  be 
wiser  not  to  be  passive  in  such  a  matter.  But 
you  said  he;  why  not  she?  " 


40  The  Heroine  in  Bronze 

11  When  it  was  she,  I  stayed  on  the  same  side 
of  the  fence!  " 

"  Indeed!  Oh,  indeed!  Did  she  get  scratched 
by  the  briers?  " 

"  Not  intentionally." 

"  A  New  York  brier  might  have  scratched 
her  intentionally.  But  all  this  is  something 
new.  Why  did  I  never  hear  of  this  before? 
Did  you  —  love  her?  " 

"  I  thought  I  did." 

"  Don't  you  think  so  now  ?  " 

"  Not  now!  " 

"  When  did  you  begin  to  think  you  didn't, 
please?  " 

"  The  first  time  I  saw  —  some  one  else." 

"  The  first  time !  You  seem  to  be  very  observ 
ing.  How  do  you  happen  to  be  so  observing  ?  " 

"  An  author  has  to  be  observing." 

"  Are  you  an  author?  " 

"  Well,  an  acorn  is  not  an  oak.  And  yet  an 
acorn  is  an  oak.  I  am  the  unstoppable  acorn 
with  the  untoppable  oak-like  future." 

"  It  must  be  very  nice  to  be  sure  of  yourself 
so  far  in  advance.  It  must  be  very  flattering  to 


The  Parting  41 

one's  vanity  to  be  an  acorn  and  foresee  itself  an 
oak." 

"  It  does  help." 

"  So :  as  an  author  you  are  sure  of  yourself 
and  sure  of  the  future.  But  when  it  comes  to 
being  in  love  with  a  girl  in  a  brier  patch,  you 
don't  seem  to  be  so  positive.  You  can  be  one 
thing  at  one  time  and  another  thing  at  another 
time :  life  is  all  present  and  no  future." 

I  thought  the  moment  opportune  to  insert  a 
question :  — 

"  Are  you  sorry  I  changed  ?  Do  you  regret 
that  I  do  not  love  her  now?  " 

"  That  is  not  a  fit  question  to  ask!  And  it 
is  not  fit  to  answer!  And  it  is  not  the  question 
at  all!  The  point  is  that  you  are  —  change 
able." 

"  I  was  only  a  little  fellow!  " 

"  Can't  a  big  fellow  change  ?  " 

"  Not  if  a  girl  knows  herself!  " 

"  Indeed!  And  so  I  suppose  girls  have  it  as 
their  destiny  to  lie  awake  of  nights,  trying  to 
know  themselves.  Meanwhile  the  heroes  who 
cause  all  the  anxiety  sleep.  When  they  are  so 


42  The  Heroine  in  Bronze 

disposed,  they  call  on  us.  If  they  are  no  longer 
held  by  us,  but  feel  like  wandering,  it  is  proof 
that  we  have  not  attained  the  necessary  self- 
knowledge.  Is  that  what  you  tried  to  say?  " 

"  That  is  what  I  said  without  trying.  Still, 
you  express  my  meaning  far  better  than  I  could 
—  with  the  carefulness  of  one  who  means  to 
profit  by  experience!  " 

I  think  there  was  more  laughter.  Then  came 
an  inquiry. 

This  talk  —  the  time  and  place  and  manner 
of  it  —  had  its  comic  phase.  She  being  where 
she  was  and  I  being  where  I  was,  it  had  its 
absurdity.  Her  inquiry  showed  that  it  was  the 
absurdity  she  wished  to  have  openly  recognized 
between  us :  — 

"  Does  any  one  hear?    Is  any  one  passing?  " 

"  No  one  —  but  I  require  no  witnesses.  On 
Fifth  Avenue  I  see  a  stage  passing,  and  motor 
cars  and  people  in  carriages ;  on  Sixth  Avenue  I 
behold  a  surface  car  and  an  elevated  train  and 
delivery  wagons  and  more  pedestrians ;  let  them 
pedester." 

"Then  we  will  go  back  for  a  moment  to  those 


The  Parting  43 

wonderful  August  days :  to  the  girl  who  ate 
the  blackberries  —  on  the  same  side  of  the  fence. 
I  did  not  wish  any  one  to  hear  me  speak  of  such 
a  person  !  Was  she  a  little  fellow  too?" 

"About  my  height.  A  quarter  of  an  inch 
lower." 

"A  quarter  of  an  inch!  Very  observing 
again !  You  must  have  stood  very  close  to 
her  to  observe  that  quarter  of  an  inch  ! " 

"I  did." 

"And  the  relative  position  did  not  annoy  you  ?  " 

"Not  in  the  least!" 

"You  speak  as  though  it  might  have  done  the 
reverse,  as  though  it  might  have  pleased  you 
surprisingly." 

"It  did!" 

"It  is  fortunate  for  the  world  that  you  were 
not  old  enough  to  —  to  —  kiss  her  !" 

"I  was!" 

"Still,  it  is  not  to  be  supposed  that  you  were 
swept  off  your  feet  by  the  impetuosity  of  your 
age!" 

"Hundreds  of  times!" 

"Now,  that  is  strange  !    Hundreds  of  times  ! 


44  The  Heroine  in  Bronze 

I  wonder  what  hundreds  could  mean  in  such  a 
case.  I  hear  that  once  is  supposed  to  mean 
everything.  Hundreds !  No ;  I  don't  think 
hundreds  would  mean  anything  at  all.  And 
how  long  did  this  obsession  for  hundreds  last?" 

"One  summer." 

"Hundreds  of  times  in  one  summer  !  You 
seem  to  have  been  a  capable  little  fellow  !  Hard 
working  at  something  that  did  not  mean  any 
thing  !  It  leads  me  to  recall  the  Infant 
Hercules  !  And  you  were  not  tired  out?" 

"I  had  just  begun." 

"Mercy!  What  kept  you  from  continuing 
on  into  thousands  in  the  autumn?" 

"She  was  sent  away  to  school." 

"It  served  her  right !  She  should  have  been 
made  a  public  example  of  in  her  community. 
But  it  could  not  have  been  a  kissing-school  — 
unless  she  was  entered  as  a  post-graduate  —  or 
perhaps  as  a  teacher.  No  !  most  likely  a  school 
of  correction.  And  where  were  you  sent  to  be 
corrected?" 

"I  wasn't  sent  anywhere." 

"The  man  never  is,  I  have  heard.     But  what 


The  Parting  45 

became  of  her  in  the  institution  that  received 
her  as  an  inmate?  She  reformed?  Where  is 
she  now?" 

"She  is  living  at  her  home." 

"And  so  she  never  married  —  of  course  not ! 
Not  after  such  a  record  !" 

"She  has  hardly  had  time  to  marry;  she 
graduated  only  last  June." 

"  Graduated  !  Is  she  a  college  girl  ?  There 
seems  to  be  somewhat  too  much  of  the  College 
Girl!" 

"She  is  said  to  be  very  beautiful  —  a  budding 
Juno :  the  country  girls  there  often  are." 

"Really  !  To  fit  them,  I  suppose,  to  go  with 
the  budding  Jupiters.  If  it  were  only  vouch 
safed  to  me  to  see  one  of  the  Jupiters  ! " 

"This  edge  of  sod  on  which  I  press  my  foot 
outside  your  yard  fence  —  she  has  two  thousand 
acres  of  it  like  one  lawn  set  with  forest  trees." 

"What  interesting  grass !  I  should  think 
you  would  go  back  to  it !  Doesn't  she  encour 
age  you  to  return  —  to  pasture  ?" 

"I  haven't  been  back  for  three  years.  I  have 
not  seen  her  for  six  years." 


46  The  Heroine  in  Bronze 

"But  I  notice  that  you  evade  the  question: 
does  she  not  encourage  you?" 

"Not  to  my  knowledge." 

"But  she  does  not  discourage  you  !" 

"Not  to  my  knowledge  !  I  have  no  knowl 
edge  on  the  subject,  favorable  or  unfavorable." 

"Well,  I  have  !  I  think  she  encourages  you. 
I  feel  that  she  does.  I  can  feel  it  all  through 
me.  And  that  is  why  she  does  not  marry. 
She  is  waiting  for  you  to  come  back.  And  if 
you  have  not  heard  from  her,  you  soon  will 
hear.  Oh,  she  will  write  !  asking  whether  it 
is  not  time  for  you  to  be  coming  home ;  at  least 
for  old  time's  sake,  to  let  her  hear  from  you  ! 
While  I  think  of  it,  her  being  a  Juno  probably 
comes  from  eating  blackberries :  Junos  always 
do  make  you  think  they  have  been  fed  on  black 
berries.  But  I  do  not  like  Junos,  whether  pro 
duced  by  blackberries  or  by  any  other  berries 
whatsoever.  I  do  not  like  them  :  they  frighten 
me.  And  under  all  the  circumstances  I  think 
it  safer  for  me  to  be  in  the  house." 

After  which  the  nook  became  silent. 

I  walked  away  light-hearted.     I  trod  on  air. 


The  Parting  47 

I  had  strengthened  my  position,  and  I  thanked 
the  day  and  the  deed  and  the  hedge  —  all 
hedges.  But  had  she  supposed  that  she  was 
the  only  enchantress?  Had  I  slept  all  my  life 
to  the  sex  until  I  woke  to  her  ?  Had  I  arrived 
at  being  the  right  kind  of  youth  without  having 
travelled  the  road  of  being  the  right  kind  of 
urchin  ? 

How  easy  it  is  to  form  a  pleasant  habit !  The 
next  day  at  about  the  same  hour  I  did  not  resist 
the  temptation  again  to  bury  my  face  in  the 
fragrant  hedge  and  take  a  second  chance  and 
murmur :  — 

"How  do  you  do." 

This  time  I  heard  no  laughter.  And  there 
was  no  answer  —  at  first.  When  finally  she  did 
speak,  her  voice  was  repellent.  It  denoted 
displeasure  at  being  intruded  upon ;  resentment 
at  privacy  violated.  For  me  to  stop  there 
one  day  —  that  was  an  impulse,  a  jest.  To 
come  again  —  that  was  an  intention  —  my 
policy.  Thus  at  least  I  explained  the  rebuke 
in  her  tone  and  question :  — 

"How  did  you  know  I  was  here  ?" 


48  The  Heroine  in  Bronze 

"Do  you  think  a  hedge  could  hide  you?  I 
see  you  through  these  thick  boughs  as  through 
your  veil." 

Her  reply  descended  over  the  fence  on  my  head 
like  a  pikestaff  :  — 

"Isn't  that  —  sentimental  ?" 

"You  will  call  it  by  another  name  some  day  — 
a  stronger  name." 

"More  sentimental." 

"Have  it  your  capricious  way  now :  the  years 
will  have  it  their  steady  way  !" 

"  Most  sentimental! " 

Some  moments  of  silence  passed :  I  intended 
they  should  pass.  I  waited  motionless  by  the 
hedge.  I  made  not  a  sound.  Then  from  out 
her  bower  of  ivy  came  a  query  —  barely  audi 
ble,  timidly  searching :  — 

"Have  you  gone?" 

The  little  sentence  made  its  way  through 
leaves  and  thorns  like  the  tendril  of  a  plant 
which  reaches  out  to  take  hold  of  what  it  cannot 
see  but  would  entwine. 

I  did  not  stir  and  I  did  not  answer. 

"Have  you  gone?" 


The  Parting  49 

This  time  the  query  became  louder,  and  it  was 
poignant.  There  was  disappointment  in  it  — 
a  little  shock  —  a  little  wound.  If  she  could 
have  seen  the  calculated  triumph  on  the  counte 
nance  outside  the  hedge,  I  do  not  know  what 
would  have  become  of  the  little  green  tendril,  but 
I  think  I  know  what  would  have  happened  to 
the  whole  blooming  bush  :  it  would  have  frozen 
stiff  and  remained  frozen  stiff  —  through  the 
whole  winter  probably.  The  lowest  tempera 
ture  in  New  York  the  following  February  would 
have  been  found  there. 

I  tapped  on  one  of  the  iron  spears  till  it  rang 
musically :  — 

"Did  you  hear  that  tap?" 

There  was  a  secret  laughter  again  —  most 
quickly  checked ;  and  then  a  voice  reached  me, 
amazingly  indifferent :  — 

"I  did." 

"Well,  you  may  have  thought  it  a  tap  on  the 
fence,  but  it  was  not.  It  was  the  politest,  gentlest 
rap  at  the  classic  portal  of  a  mind  to  make  an 
inquiry:  what  were  you  thinking  of  when  I 
stopped  and  spoke  to  you  ?" 


50  The  Heroine  in  Bronze 

"A  very  prying  question  !  Very  bold,  very 
prying  !  I  was  thinking  of  you." 

"I  supposed  so.  Did  you  exhaust  the  sub 
ject  ?  Because  the  subject  as  it  stands  here  feels 
a  little  exhausted  ! " 

"I  was  not  thinking  of  you  in  the  way  you 
are  pleased  to  imagine  —  not  in  connection  with 
myself.  I  was  thinking  of  you  in  connection 
with  your  books  :  that  is  very  different !" 

"Well,"  I  said,  "there  is  a  connection  be 
tween  me  and  my  books.  I  wish  the  world 
thought  so.  But  my  publisher  tells  me  it  does 
not.  He  tells  me  that  the  world  has  never 
thought  of  my  books  in  connection  with  me  or 
in  connection  with  anything  else  on  this  earth. 
That's  the  publisher's  view.  I  am  sorry.  I 
may  not  have  created  the  literature  of  ages,  but 
I  fear  I  have  created  the  literature  of  one  useful 
man's  premature  old  age.  And  they  say  no  one 
has  ever  invented  perpetual  motion.  Well,  at 
least,  I  am  the  genius  that  in  the  literature  of 
this  nation  has  invented  eternal  rest.  Circu 
late  !  As  well  expect  the  law  of  gravitation  to 
circulate  !  No ;  there  are  three  things  on  this 


The  Parting  51 

windy  globe  that  stay  where  they  are :  lost 
cannon-balls,  my  first  editions,  and  gravity." 

"Sometimes  I  have  wished  that  there  wasn't 
any  connection  between  you  and  some  of  your 
books.  Sometimes.  With  some  of  them." 

"Well,  at  times  I  have  wished  that  there 
wasn't  any  connection,  too :  at  times  —  at  hard 
times.  I  am  ready  to  be  disconnected  now  if 
there  were  any  agency  to  bring  about  the  dis 
connection.  But  there  isn't.  Death  won't  do 
it.  When  I  am  dead,  my  books  will  settle  over 
me  like  iron  immortelles;  heavy  and  lifeless  — 
but  lasting." 

"Don't  speak  of  being  dead  !  It  fills  the  sky 
with  clouds  —  clouds  that  weep  through  years 
for  loss  and  remembrance.  Don't !  And  I 
said  that  there  have  been  times  when  I  wished  you 
had  not  written  some  of  your  books.  But  there 
are  no  such  times  now.  And  take  back  what 
you  have  just  said  against  your  stories  ! " 

The  amount  of  fight  there  was  in  that  one 
breath  of  hers  so  quietly  breathed  out  of  her 
green  nook  !  The  Seventh  Regiment  moving 
down  Fifth  Avenue  may  look  warlike  to  you; 


52  The  Heroine  in  Bronze 

the  West  Point  Cadets  as  they  sweep  by  are  a 
sign  of  future  Spartan  fields.  By  comparison 
with  the  spirit  of  combat  in  her  at  that  moment 
these  warriors  are  as  wraiths  of  imaginary  car 
nage. 

It  was  a  stupendous  revelation.  Within  a  day, 
since  that  talk  of  the  day  previous,  there  had 
been  a  change  in  her.  Never  before  had  she 
espoused  the  championship  of  my  books;  now 
she  had  interposed  her  girlish  figure  —  the 
woman's  heroic  world-figure  —  between  the 
crowd  and  the  man  she  would  defend. 

While  this  was  passing  joyously  in  my  mind,  I 
did  not  delay  my  reply  an  instant.  And  I  hid 
my  happiness  at  the  change  I  had  noticed  in 
her:  — 

"I  had  already  taken  my  words  back,"  I  said 
quietly.  "They  were  meant  to  be  taken  back 
after  they  had  served  their  purpose  to  jest  with. 
I  have  nothing  against  my  books  except  youth 
and  inexperience.  Youth  soon  goes.  Experi 
ence  must  come  in  time.  May  it  not  come  to 
me  too  late  for  me  to  win  what  my  youth  waits 
for!" 


The  Parting  53 

Well,  she  knew  what  it  was  my  youth  waited 
for ;  and  she  was  silent.  She  was  always  silent 
when  I  spoke  of  my  love,  as  though  each  time 
she  must  pause  to  weigh  it  once  more.  Then 
she  replied  more  quickly,  as  resolved  to  make 
her  thought  clear :  — 

"I  was  not  thinking  of  that,  either.  Not  of 
the  books  you  have  written,  but  of  the  stories 
you  have  not  written;  I  was  wondering  why 
you  have  not  written  them." 

I  was  impetuous  with  my  reply,  for  the  trouble 
was  an  old  trouble ;  I  had  lived  with  it  from  the 
time  I  had  begun  to  write.  I  was  ready  with 
my  reply :  — 

"I,  too,  have  wondered.  I  suppose  we  all 
do,  whether  we  write  stories  or  do  not  write 
stories.  We  all  wonder  about  the  stories  we 
do  not  write.  There  are  stories  that  flash  upon 
the  screens  of  our  consciousness,  remain  an 
instant,  then  disappear  again  in  the  unknown. 
Stories  sometimes  follow  us  for  days  as  closely 
as  our  shadows  and  then  halt  as  if  with  weari 
ness  and  are  lost  behind  us  on  the  road.  Stories 
hover  in  front  of  us  like  winged  messengers, 


54  The  Heroine  in  Bronze 

beckoning  us  on  toward  new  worlds.  Man  is 
the  story-telling  animal.  About  all  of  us 
crowd  mute  things  that  ask  at  our  hands  the 
touch  to  awaken  them,  that  plead  with  us  for 
the  gift  of  life.  It  is  as  if  one  common  univer 
sal  dust  bespoke  for  itself  evermore  the  miracle 
of  creation  and  demanded  that  man  give  to  it 
the  cast  of  man.  I,  too,  have  wondered  at  the 
stories  I  have  not  written.  Why  out  of  so  many 
I  have  written  so  few,  and  none  of  them  among 
the  great  ones." 

There  was  stillness  beyond  the  hedge,  and  this 
grew  more  intense.  My  ear  then  caught  the 
sounds  of  movements:  a  book  was  laid  down; 
there  were  soft  slippings  of  her  silken  draperies 
as  she  changed  her  position ;  I  heard  her  fingers 
—  these  wonderful  fingers  —  suddenly  brush 
with  an  impetuous  rippling  movement  across  the 
leaves  of  the  ivy  as  one  might  in  a  sweep  of 
passion  strike  the  strings  of  a  harp.  When  she 
spoke,  her  voice  had  deepened,  and  it  trembled. 

"I  was  not  quite  thinking  of  that,  either. 
Not  of  the  stories  you  have  never  chosen  to  write, 
but  of  the  stories  you  have  attempted  to  write  — 


The  Parting  55 

but  have  never  wholly  written.  You  know  that 
sometimes  as  we  look  at  a  rainbow  our  eyes 
wander  from  it  to  a  fainter,  higher  rainbow  span 
ning  the  lower  glaring  one.  Both  rainbows  are 
parts  of  the  same  event  of  cloud  and  sun,  of  fall 
ing  drops  and  falling  light.  And  sometimes  as  I 
read  one  of  your  stories,  I  look  from  it  to  a  story 
that  seems  to  bend  above  it  —  to  the  fainter, 
higher  story  you  almost  wrote  in  writing  the 
other.  I  see  a  rainbow  nearer  the  dome ;  I  see  an 
unwritten  story  nearer  greatness.  Your  actual 
stories  always  suggest  greater  stories ;  and  I 
have  more  faith  in  you  than  I  have  in  what  you 
have  done." 

Thus  the  truth  in  her  must  come  out;  she 
was  as  a  child  for  very  truth-telling.  I  was  even 
quicker  in  my  reply  this  time  because  this  prob 
lem  too  was  a  familiar  problem,  the  trouble  of 
troubles,  the  woe  of  woes.  I  was  quicker  with 
my  rejoinder  and  defence  :  — 

"It  is  because  I  am  young,  because  I  lack  ex 
perience.  Youth,  inexperience  —  that  is  the 
trouble  !  I  too  know  that  each  of  my  stories 
is  a  broken,  unfinished  arch.  I  know  that  the 


56  The  Heroine  in  Bronze 

colors  spread  over  that  arch  are  not  the  colors  of 
Nature :  they  are  false  and  they  are  confused. 
No  story  that  I  have  written  is  either  the  arch  of 
form  or  the  prism  of  light:  I  realize  all  this 
more  deeply  than  any  one  else  could." 

There  I  stopped :  I  could  not  bear  to  tell  her 
that  youth  and  inexperience  were  not  the  only 
obstacles ;  that  life  otherwise  had  never  given  me 
my  chance.  I  let  it  go  at  youth  and  inexperience 
and  kept  hindrances  and  struggles  to  myself. 

Her  reply  came  eagerly  back  to  me,  as  though 
she  had  scarcely  waited  for  mine,  as  though 
nothing  could  now  keep  her  from  going  to  the 
limit  of  her  purpose  :  — 

"Youth  soon  goes,  as  you  say.  And  experi 
ence  may  come,  as  you  say.  But  how  long  may 
experience  be  in  coming  ?  To  how  many  has  it 
come  too  late  —  too  late  for  life  to  have  what 
makes  life  full  and  sweet.  May  not  experience 
be  hastened?  If  it  can  be  hastened,  ought  it 
not  to  be  hastened?" 

I  answered  with  ready  scorn  :  — 

"  Tell  how  to  hasten  it !" 

For  a  while  she  did  not  answer.     When  she 


The  Parting  57 

did,  there  was  a"  fine  withdrawal  in  her  nature ; 
it  had  shrunk  from  touching  the  personal  in  this 
way.  Yet,  despite  this,  she  would  speak  out :  — 

"Have  you  no  help,  no  advice,  no  guidance  ?" 

I  answered  proudly :  — 

"My  help,  my  advice,  my  guidance  are  the 
great  models  —  the  great  masters." 

She  answered  persuasively :  — 

"The  great  masters  are  dead.  You  can  study 
the  great  models,  the  great  models  cannot  study 
you.  You  can  find  out  their  faults,  they  cannot 
point  out  your  faults.  A  living  counsellor  — 
why  have  you  none,  to  do  that  ?" 

I  answered  with  my  stiff-necked  confidence :  — 
"No  living  counsellor  have  I ;  nor  will  I  have." 
For  a  long  time  —  what  seemed  to  me  an  end 
less    time  —  she    deliberated.     I    could    barely 
hear  what  she  said  at  length,  so  timid  was  it,  so 
shrinking  with  delicacy  —  yet  so  resolute :  — 

"May  I  be  your  counsellor?" 

II  You/  " 

"They  used  to  say  in  college  that  I  had  some 
small  gift  of  that  sort,  to  judge  things.  The 
Professors  told  me  this  during  the  years  that  I 


58  The  Heroine  in  Bronze 

studied  under  them.  The  Professor  of  English 
especially ;  he  would  sometimes  set  before  us  the 
work  of  finding  out  where  a  great  master  was 
wrong  —  where  he  nodded.  My  roommate 
would  tell  me  this  when  we  sometimes  exchanged 
our  exercises  to  see  which  could  better  the  other. 
It  may  have  been  kindness  in  them  all.  It  may 
not  have  been  true  that  I  have  any  such  gift  — 
to  find  fault.  But  if  I  have  — " 

I  answered  her  as  at  last  meeting  her  alone  in 
Life's  road :  — 

"I  can  have  but  one  counsellor  :  the  woman  I 
love,  the  woman  who  loves  me :  only  to  her  could 
I  throw  open  the  gates  that  are  shut  against  the 
world  and  say :  See  of  what  I  am  made.  Here  I 
am;  here  is  all  there  is  of  me.  These  shapes, 
forms,  images  —  they  are  my  ideals.  These  are 
my  emotions,  those  are  my  enthusiasms.  Here 
are  my  gifts,  there  are  my  hopes.  As  all  these 
are  mine  and  as  you  are  mine,  they  are  yours. 
Learn  to  be  at  home  with  them ;  then  you  will 
be  at  home  with  me.  And  help  me  !  So  that 
I  may  perhaps  leave  one  piece  of  work  —  if  but 
one  —  that  will  long  stand,  drawing  to  itself  the 


The  Parting  59 

eyes  of  the  world  as  an  arch  of  eternal  form  and  as 
the  hues  of  Nature's  light.  I  have  asked  you 
many  times  to  marry  me.  I  ask  you  now  — 
will  you  ?  And  will  you  be  that  counsellor  ?  " 

The  silence  of  the  garden  !  The  emptiness  of 
the  beautiful  day  !  The  paling  brilliance  of  the 
sun !  That  shadow  and  chill  of  noon !  She 
was  gone  ! 

Heart-sore  and  with  heavy  feet  I  walked  away. 
But  I  was  right.  From  her,  of  all  persons  in  the 
world,  I  could  accept  no  aid.  If  I  must  win  her 
by  what  I  was  and  what  I  could  do,  she  must  not 
help.  If  she  required  of  me  that  I  scale  an  all 
but  unscalable  wall  to  reach  her,  she  must  not 
open  a  gate  through  the  wall  that  I  might  enter 
easily,  slothfully. 

But  well  I  knew,  perhaps  a  little  grudgingly, 
what  a  counsellor  she  could  have  been.  And  as 
I  walked  away,  once  more  there  rose  before  me 
the  whole  scene  when  I  first  beheld  her :  — 

A  slender  figure  on  the  edge  of  the  platform 
in  the  great  audience  hall  of  her  college,  with  a 
vast  audience  of  young  and  old  attentive  and  rev 
erent  to  her.  She  standing  there  with  the  reluc- 


60  The  Heroine  in  Bronze 

tance  of  girlhood  and  shrinking  modesty  of  na 
ture  where  she  had  never  stood  and  would  never 
again  stand  —  to  speak  to  the  world  once  and 
then  retire :  yet  resolved  to  make  the  moment 
worth  while  if  possible  by  uttering  something 
true  within  herself. 

She  had  won  the  honors  in  Literature,  and  it 
was  for  Literature  she  had  chosen  to  speak.  And 
she  spoke  so  simply,  without  display  of  scholarship 
which  would  have  been  easier  than  simplicity. 
In  the  most  natural  manner,  and  as  though  she 
could  not  help  saying  it,  she  drew  attention  to  an 
ideal  within  the  human  spirit  as  to  what  no  man 
hath  done.  That  was  the  title  of  her  essay, 
What  No  Man  hath  Done;  and  she  unfolded  her 
theme  around  one  instinct  of  man  which  forever 
sends  him  onward  along  his  road  —  unsatisfied. 
No  matter  what  book  we  read,  she  said,  something 
within  us  lifts  us  above  that  book,  leads  us  be 
yond  that  book :  we  must  press  on.  No  master 
piece  in  any  art  is  a  measure  of  what  there  is  in 
any  one  of  us.  We  are  forever  asking  for  pic 
tures  that  have  never  been  painted.  We  see 
statues  unquarried,  yet  in  the  marble  of  Paros. 


The  Parting  61 

Our  ears  listen  for  music  that  has  never  reached 
human  instruments.  Our  eyes  vaguely  make 
out  temples  that  have  never  been  built.  In  our 
hands  lie  the  books  that  have  never  been  written. 
It  is  thus  with  the  human  spirit  in  the  arts.  It 
cannot  long  fold  its  wings  upon  its  own  master 
piece;  it  rests  there  awhile,  then  must  fly  on. 
Thus  all  achievement  is  but  small  part  of  what 
man  strives  to  achieve ;  and  thus  the  old  always 
leave  the  young  something  to  do.  Forever  the 
young !  The  eyes  of  the  world,  fixed  on  the 
Road  of  Time,  see  the  weary  and  broken  figures 
of  the  old  pass  down  it  and  disappear ;  and  look 
ing  up  the  road,  it  always  expects  to  see,  coming 
to  replace  these,  some  youth,  some  stranger,  some 
young  unknown.  Always  a  youth  —  the  young 
stranger  —  who  will  do  what  no  man  hath  done. 

The  conversation  through  the  blossom-sweet 
hedge,  where  our  hearts  one  time  almost  met  like 
birds  in  May,  had  taken  place  a  few  weeks  before 
the  morning  of  which  I  write.  And  now  on  that 
June  morning  I  was  on  my  way,  swinging  along 
across  the  city,  to  tell  her  of  my  first  masterwork. 

I,  a  young  stranger  on  the  road  of  time. 


CHAPTER  III 

RANG  the  door-bell  as  one  on 
whose  shoulders  had  fallen  the 
Mantle  of  the  Succession  —  that 
Mantle  of  Beautiful  Work  which 
has  descended  through  the  ages 
from  one  youth  to  another  youth,  always  to  a 
youth. 

From  impatience  to  enter  I  seemed  to  be 
made  to  wait  too  long.  When  at  last  the  door 
was  opened  by  the  butler,  who  was  not  the  one 
formally  to  open  it,  he  looked  flurried  as  though 
this  duty  had  called  him  from  other  duties. 
Yet  he  was  prepared  to  receive  me ;  and  plainly 
acting  under  orders,  he  invited  me  to  come  out 
into  the  garden;  whereupon  he  led  the  way 
through  the  hall  to  the  rear  veranda,  from  which 
the  garden  could  be  seen. 

As  I  followed,  wondering  at  his  unusual  man 
ner  and  also  at  this  unaccountable  reception 
of  me,  further  evidence  offered  itself  that  the 
62 


The  Parting  63 

household  was  at  this  early  hour  not  ready  for 
visitors.  Shawls  and  top-coats  lay  on  the  hat- 
rack;  a  maid  flitted  past  me  apologetically 
with  wraps  on  her  arm ;  the  doors  of  the  break 
fast-room  were  opened,  the  breakfast  service 
had  not  yet  been  removed,  on  the  floor  stood  a 
hamper  heaped  with  fruits  and  bonbons  and 
bottles  of  wine ;  and  when  at  the  end  of  the 
hall  the  butler  with  another  bow  withdrew  and 
I  stepped  out  upon  the  veranda,  there  likewise 
was  disorder.  The  veranda  formed  the  south 
ern  exposure  of  that  older  New  York  mansion ;  it 
was  already  fitted  up  for  early  summer  with 
fresh  awnings,  and  I  could  but  notice  that  the 
chairs  were  still  grouped  as  guests  of  the  even 
ing  before  had  drawn  them  together.  But  in 
another  instant  I  had  caught  sight  of  her  and 
lost  thought  of  everything  else. 

She  was  walking  along  the  path  at  the  rear 
of  the  garden :  slowly  as  though  she  waited  for 
some  one  to  seek  her  there  by  arrangement. 
At  that  vision  of  her  I  halted,  as  I  remember 
still,  with  a  downward  step  half  taken;  I  think 
my  breath  almost  stopped.  For  it  was  as  though 


64  The  Heroine  in  Bronze 

the  curtains  of  the  ideal  had  been  unexpectedly 
drawn  apart,  allowing  me  to  see  there  in  nature 
the  heroine  of  my  romance.  There  before  my 
very  eyes  was  the  essence  and  fable  of  life's 
morning  —  there  in  that  slender,  full-moulded 
form  moving  through  the  cool  limpid  air;  with 
dewdrops  on  the  verdure  about  her  feet ;  with 
fragrant  buds  opening  on  the  boughs  around 
her  hands  and  eyes.  She  looked  all  white  and 
silver  as  though  the  mists  of  night  had  just  un 
rolled  themselves  from  her  shape  —  all  white 
and  silver  except  for  the  lustrous  gold  of  her 
hair.  The  sun,  beginning  to  fall  into  the  garden 
above  the  roofs  of  the  houses,  sometimes  touched 
her  face,  sometimes  was  shut  off  from  it  as  she 
moved  along.  The  Old  Greek  said  that  divine 
things  go  on  light  feet :  she  went  on  light  feet. 

At  a  bend  of  the  path  she  turned  to  retrace 
her  steps,  and  as  she  did  so  cast  a  glance  toward 
the  house  and  discovered  me,  looking  at  her. 
With  a  quick  gesture  of  grace  she  waved  a 
white  scarf  she  carried,  so  thin,  so  diaphanous 
that  it  floated  on  the  air  like  a  banner  of  morn 
ing  frost.  I  do  not  know  why,  but  it  brought 


The  Parting  65 

to  mind  Isolde's  scarf  shaken  beckoningly  at 
that  ill-timed  hunting  hour  with  Tristan.  Then 
as  I  hurried  down  toward  her  she  advanced 
responsively  toward  me  with  steps  of  eagerness, 
her  countenance  marvellously  lighted  up. 

When  we  met,  she  laid  her  hands  intimately 
in  mine  and  came  closer  to  me  than  she  had 
ever  stood  and  searched  my  face  with  emotions 
she  had  never  revealed.  There  was  some  won 
derful  change  in  her,  some  latent  excitement; 
she  might  have  welcomed  me  thus  if  actual  tid 
ings  of  my  happiness  had  outstripped  my  haste 
and  apprised  her  of  my  coming.  I  lost  not  a 
moment  to  give  her  the  explanation  of  my  hur 
ried  visit;  and  I  endeavored  with  my  first 
words  to  link  it  with  something  dear  and  sacred 
in  her  own  memory. 

"Do  you  remember,"  I  asked,  smiling,  "that 
last  year  on  a  June  day  like  this,  in  a  great  col 
lege  and  before  a  great  audience,  one  of  the 
graduating  class  read  an  essay  in  which  she  had 
something  to  say  about  stories  that  no  one  has 
ever  written  and  that  the  world  waits  for?" 

When  I  began  to  speak,  her  eyes  were  resting 


66  The  Heroine  in  Bronze 

on  mine  with  lights  and  shadows  in  them  as 
though  she  were  happy,  yet  not  happy.  Before 
I  finished,  their  expression  changed;  only  dis 
appointment  darkened  them,  simple  wonder 
ment  at  me  for  saying  what  I  had  said.  And 
she  replied  reluctantly,  as  though  not  pleased  to 
be  forced  to  recall  what  had  been  her  day  of 
triumph.  It  was  her  triumph  in  it  that  always 
made  her  averse  to  mention  it. 

"I  remember,  of  course,"  she  said.  "But 
why  do  you  bring  that  up  now  ? " 

"Do  you  remember  that  a  certain  young 
stranger  sat  in  the  audience,  listening  to  every 
word,  as  he  told  you  soon  afterwards?" 

"Of  course,"  she  replied  again,  still  more 
against  her  will,  as  though  those  distant  matters 
had  no  place  in  these  intense  moments.  "But 
why  do  you  go  back  to  that  —  at  this  time  ?" 

"Because,"  I  said,  "I  have  brought  you  one 
of  those  stories.  This  morning  when  I  awoke, 
it  awoke  with  me :  it  begins  my  better  work : 
all  that  I  have  so  far  done  —  let  that  go  !  With 
this  I  enter  upon  my  real  life-work.  And  I  have 
hurried  here  to  tell  you  —  to  tell  you  first !" 


The  Parting  67 

The  light  and  warmth  of  her  welcome  died 
out  of  her  face.  Without  a  word  she  turned 
and  walked  away  from  me. 

I  stood  stricken  in  my  tracks.  She  came  back, 
and  with  a  kind  of  sacred  indignation  reproached 
me :  — 

"Is  that  what  brought  you?  Did  you 
come  to  speak  to  me  about  one  of  your 
stories?" 

It  was  as  though  she  whom  I  had  thought 
the  spirit  of  all  gentleness,  the  incarnation  of 
the  exquisite,  had  put  out  her  hand  and  with 
inconceivable  brutality  struck  me  a  blow  in 
the  face.  The  glory  of  the  day  died  out  of  the 
world;  the  gorgeous  dream  of  the  morning 
burst  on  the  air  like  a  roseate  bubble  and  was 
gone;  buoyancy  of  spirit  tumbled  headlong  to 
the  ground  with  a  broken  wing;  enthusiasm 
was  murdered.  My  silence  seemed  all  the  more 
to  arouse  her  as  she,  in  evident  pain,  reiterated 
her  incredible  words  :  — 

"Did  you  come  to  tell  me  about  a  story?" 

I  stepped  back  from  her :  — 

"It  was  a  mistake." 


68  The  Heroine  in  Bronze 

She  followed  me  closely  up  in  the  stress  of 
her  emotion:  — 

"Was  my  note  to  you  a  mistake  ?"  she  asked. 
"  Was  it  of  no  consequence  that  you  pass  it 
over  in  this  way  to  speak  of  other  things  ?  Was 
it  not  worth  a  thought,  a  word?" 

"Your  note  !"  I  cried,  bewildered,  but  catch 
ing  at  a  clew.  "What  note?" 

She  in  turn  look  bewildered,  and  she  also 
grasped  at  a  clew  :  — 

"I  sent  you  a  note  after  breakfast.  Did  you 
not  receive  a  note  from  me  by  messenger?" 

"I  have  received  no  note;  I  must  have  left 
my  apartment  before  he  reached  there." 

"And  you  did  not  come  in  reply  to  my  note  ?  " 
she  insisted  with  some  calmness,  as  though  light 
were  now  breaking  in  upon  her. 

"I  have  told  you  why  I  came." 

"Then  you  do  not  know  what  I  wrote  you. 
I  wrote  asking  you  to  come  and  tell  me 
good-by  this  morning ;  we  are  going  to  Europe 
this  afternoon." 

Since  the  first  day  of  our  acquaintance  I  had 
never  been  separated  from  her  for  any  long 


The  Parting  69 

time,  a  few  weeks  at  farthest.  Now  this  vast 
chasm  of  separation !  I  seemed  to  stand  on  the 
edge  of  an  abyss,  gazing  into  vacancy. 

"How  long  will  you  be  gone  ?" 

"Until  sometime  in  October." 

I  counted  the  months;  they  made  nearly 
half  a  year. 

"Are  you  going  —  alone  ?" 

"My  father  and  I  are  the  only  members  of 
the  family  to  start;  my  brothers  do  not  think 
that  a  summer  in  Europe  promises  as  much 
pleasure  as  a  summer  in  the  United  States.  My 
aunt  is  to  join  us  in  Paris." 

She  went  on,  at  once  taking  me  into  full 
confidence.  She  made  it  her  first  point  that  I 
should  have  details.  In  the  party  to  sail  would 
be  some  old  friends :  father  and  mother  and 
daughter.  The  daughter  had  been  her  college 
confidante  and  still  was  her  most  intimate  friend. 
There  lay  peril  for  me :  her  brother  was  one  of 
my  rivals.  It  was  enough  that  he  could  press 
his  suit  through  his  own  worth.  She  continued : 
during  part  of  the  summer  other  friends  would 
join  them  —  a  mother  and  her  son.  The 


yo  The  Heroine  in  Bronze 

mother  had  been  the  friend  of  her  mother's ; 
the  son  was  a  University  honor-man,  and  he 
was  now  pursuing  post-graduate  studies  in 
Germany.  I  knew  him  well  also  —  another 
rival  to  be  dreaded  on  his  own  account.  Her 
father  and  aunt,  she  concluded,  were  to  motor 
through  France :  she  did  not  like  to  motor ; 
while  they  were  away,  her  chaperon  would 
be  this  mother  —  the  friend  of  her  mother's. 

As  she  outlined  these  plans  and  pleasures, 
old  savage  instincts  welled  up  within  me, 
jealousy,  rage,  with  their  wretchedness.  I 
wheeled  upon  her  in  the  garden  path  :  — 

"And  you  arranged  to  be  gone  half  a  year 
with  those  you  care  for  most  and  without  a 
word  to  me  —  until  the  last  moment  ?  " 

I  put  into  my  voice  the  sense  of  a  wrong ;  the 
sense  of  a  right;  my  disappointment  in  her 
character;  my  arraignment  of  the  standards 
of  her  conduct.  She  stood  silent  and  I  repeated 
my  words :  — 

"You  did  this!  Is  that  what  you  thought  of 
me?" 

She   drew   herself   up   in   a   quivering   moral 


The  Parting  71 

growth  as  though  no  such  touch  of  censure  had 
ever  been  laid  upon  her  in  life. 

"Was  there  any  obligation  that  I  should  make 
you  acquainted  with  our  plans  of  summer 
travel  ?  " 

"No,"  I  cried.  "There  was  no  obligation! 
More  than  an  obligation  or  nothing.  But  the 
last  moment  is  too  late  for  any  good-by  to  you 
from  me." 

I  lifted  my  hat  and  turned  away  from  her 
toward  the  house.  After  I  had  gone  several 
steps  her  voice  overtook  me.  It  was  half 
amused,  half  plaintive  :  — 

"  Will  you  wait  ?    Will  you  listen  ?  " 

I  would  neither  wait  nor  listen.  As  I  strode 
on,  my  eyes  seemed  blinded  to  the  ground  before 
me.  She  suddenly  laid  a  light  touch  on  my 
arm:  — 

"I  could  not  tell  you  sooner  !  I  myself  did  not 
know!" 

I  stopped.  She  had  regained  composure 
now,  she  was  smiling  again;  and  she  looked 
into  my  eyes  as  though  she  had  discovered 
there  was  nothing  wrong  between  us,  only  the 


72  The  Heroine  in  Bronze 

comedy  of  a  misunderstanding.  Then  she 
explained :  — 

"  There  was  no  chance  to  tell  you.  My 
father  came  home  late  last  night  from  a  dinner 
with  some  friends  at  the  Club.  It  was  while 
there  he  learned  that  some  of  them  were  to  sail 
to-day;  and  he  at  once  decided  that  we  should 
sail  with  them.  You  may  not  know  that  a 
day's  notice  is  usually  all  the  time  that  my  father 
gives  us :  sailing  anywhere  seems  to  him  so 
easy.  He  did  not  reach  home  until  after  mid 
night,  and  it  was  then  too  late  for  word  to  reach 
you.  But  I  wrote  immediately  after  breakfast, 
asking  you  to  come  and  say  good-by  to  me, 
and  as  the  servants  would  be  packing  up  and 
the  house  would  be  in  disorder,  I  arranged  to 
tell  you  good-by  here." 

And  then  she  added,  after  allowing  time  for 
this  explanation  to  have  due  weight  with  me :  — 

"I  thought  this  was  a  good  deal  for  me  to  do. 
And  when  you  came  and  paid  no  attention  —  to 
our  sailing  —  to  my  note  —  to  a  good-by  — 
and  began  to  speak  of  your  work  —  as  though 
my  going  away  meant  nothing  —  why,  then, 


The  Parting  73 

very  naturally — "     She  broke  off  and  looked 
away  from  me. 

Our  misunderstanding  was  over.  We  were 
walking  slowly  along  the  garden  path  in  silence. 
Silence  at  such  moments  reunites  more  quickly 
than  words.  And  as  we  walked,  I  am  sure 
that  our  thoughts  met  once  more  on  the  few 
moments  we  were  to  be  together  and  on  all  that 
must  be  said. 

As  we  passed  the  marble  seat,  she,  with 
sudden  notice  of  it  and  a  slight  gesture,  led  the 
way  thither.  There  she  seated  herself,  facing 
me.  She  linked  her  hands  in  her  lap  and  bent 
slightly  over  toward  me  as  though  she  were 
now  impatiently  coming  back  to  something  too 
long  pushed  aside.  She  spoke  with  a  rush  of 
eagerness : — 

"And  now  —  the  story!  What  beautiful 
tidings  to  sail  with  and  to  keep  by  me  all 
summer !" 

I  barely  heard  her,  for  my  thoughts  were  on 
the  picture  she  made. 

The  old  wall  of  the  garden  darkly  shadowed 


74  The  Heroine  in  Bronze 

with  ivy  rose  behind  her;   some  of  the  topmost 
branches,  falling  outward  and  downward,  almost 
overhung  with  leaves  of  tender  green  her  golden 
head.     Near  her    stood    the  rose-bush    thickly 
crowded  with  the  brief  procession  of  its  buds. 
She  sat  there  under  the  blue  sky  of  the  summer 
morning  with  the  freshness  of  the  blue  and  silver 
sea  in  the  air  about  her;    an  American  vestal 
of  the  college  in  her  land  and  race  and  time. 
Yet  like  a  Greek  vestal  on  the  Greek-like  seat; 
Greek-like  in  the  softness  of  snowy  vestments 
which  we  in  our  day  touch  only  as  the  hardness 
of    marble;     Greek-like    in    symmetry,    grace, 
health.     Not  an  ornament;    not   the   simplest 
band  of  linked  gold  around  her  neck  bared  low ; 
not  a  gem  in  the  ear,  nor  bracelet  on  the  arms 
bared  to  the  elbows  —  arms  the  chisellings  of 
which  were  as  of  alabaster  and  the  flesh  tones 
of   which  was   as  alabaster  shadowed  by  rose 
leaves.    A  comb  of  palest  amber  out  of  an  old 
Greek  sea  caught  up  the  soft  gleaming  gold  of  her 
hair :    across  the  top  of  the  comb  lay  a  little 
garland  of    shaken  windflowers.     In  her    eyes 
the  one  blue  of  the  sky  and  of  the  sea  for  the 
gladness  of  that  day. 


The  Parting  75 

"  And  now,"  she  had  said,  bending  over 
toward  me  with  sympathy  and  eagerness,  "the 
story !  " 

I  slowly  shook  my  head :  — 

"  When  I  was  ready  to  tell  you,  you  were 
not  ready  to  listen.  Now  you  are  ready  to 
listen,  and  I  cannot  tell  you." 

She  looked  at  me  with  swift  disappointment 
and  waited  for  some  explanation. 

"  Do  you  remember  Othello's  words  ?  "  I  said, 
finding  his  mournful  ones  better  than  any  of 
my  own  at  that  moment.  "  Do  you  remember 
Othello's  words  on  that  last  night?  When  he 
took  up  the  candle  which  was  to  light  his  way 
as  he  walked  toward  Desdemona  in  her  sleep, 
he  mused  that  if  he  put  out  the  candle,  he  could 
light  it  again,  but  that  if  he  put  out  the  light 
of  her  life,  no  power  could  it  relume.  When  I 
awoke  this  morning,  I  had  within  me  a  new 
flame,  the  light  of  something  beautiful  that  was 
like  a  flame.  I  hurried  here  to  you  with  it; 
and  like  a  torch  in  the  hand  of  one  who  runs 
through  the  air,  with  every  step  I  took  it  flamed 
larger  and  more  bright.  But  when  I  met  you, 


76  The  Heroine  in  Bronze 

as  with  one  gust  of  black  wet  night  you  blew  it 
out.  It  is  not  out  like  a  life,  I  know,  never  to 
flame  within  me  again.  After  you  are  gone, 
perhaps  when  I  set  to  work  to-night,  I  shall 
expect  to  rekindle  it.  But  for  this  day  at 
least  it  is  out  —  out  like  a  candle.  The  thought 
of  your  going  away  fills  me  like  darkness  and 
rain ;  the  story  is  like  a  candle  out  in  a  rain  at 
night." 

My  sad  words  were  as  new  life  to  her.  I 
think  she  would  not  have  had  me  suffer  less  at 
the  thought  of  her  going.  But  that  she  was  not 
to  hear  the  story  only  fed  her  desire  to  hear  it. 
Her  whole  nature  had  quickly  turned  toward  it 
as  bringing  me  before  her  in  new  light,  with  a 
larger  importance.  She  did  not  hesitate  to 
voice  her  protest. 

"  But  I  cannot  go  away  without  knowing ! 
Give  me  some  little  picture  of  it  to  take  with 
me."  And  then  she  added,  with  a  smile  of 
archness  and  of  warning :  — 

"  You  know  it  is  all  of  yours  I  have  to  take !  " 

"What  of  yours  have  I  to  keep?"  I  said, 
glad  of  a  demurrer  on  such  grounds. 


The  Parting  77 

With  a  quick  impulse  she  lifted  the  scarf  from 
her  lap  and  lightly  shook  out  its  folds :  — 

"  I  will  leave  you  this,"  she  said.  "  Only,  it 
has  been  around  my  neck." 

"  Let  it  be  around  your  neck  once  more  that 
I  may  see  the  picture:  then  it  will  not  be 
something  apart  from  you." 

Laughing,  she  shook  out  the  film  of  scarf  and 
threw  it  as  a  band  of  white  mist  over  her  hair 
and  let  it  slip  down  about  her  neck.  Then 
taking  an  end  of  it  in  each  hand  she  drew  these 
down  transversely  across  her  breast  and  so  sat 
looking  at  me  —  as  a  portrait  —  for  remem 
brance. 

But  as  in  a  portrait  the  sitter  may,  unaware, 
let  come  into  his  eyes  some  look  that  will  be 
full  of  meaning  long  after  he  has  vanished,  she 
unconsciously  gave  some  revelation  of  herself  to 
last  while  she  was  away.  After  which,  with  the 
careless  air  of  one  who  is  not  unmindful  that 
what  is  bestowed  is  worthless,  she,  smiling, 
folded  the  scarf  and  handed  it  to  me  —  that 
grave  portrait  light  slowly  vanishing  in  her 
eyes. 


78  The  Heroine  in  Bronze 

For  a  third  time  she  now  made  her  request 
as  one  who  has  kept  her  part  of  a  compact  and 
has  justice  on  her  side.  She  leaned  back  against 
the  marble  seat  so  that  she  was  a  little  shadowed 
under  the  tender  green  of  the  ivy  boughs. 

"  Now  I  will  have  what  is  coming  to  me," 
she  said,  laughing  and  eager. 

I  turned  half  round  to  shut  out  the  torment 
ing  picture  of  her  —  to  put  away  the  thoughts 
and  emotions  of  the  instant.  It  was  as  if  some 
young  worker  in  silver,  one  day,  far  from  the 
surroundings  of  his  craft  and  sitting  beside  her 
who  was  everything  to  him  but  his  art,  should 
be  asked  by  her  to  forget  love  and  life,  and 
thinking  of  his  art  only,  describe  for  her  some 
work  in  silver  of  which  he  had  as  yet  only 
dreamed  in  his  distant  shop. 

I  could  not  do  this  at  once,  and  I  sat  looking 
across  the  garden  spread  out  under  its  blue 
sky,  in  its  mesh  of  silver  light,  filled  with  morn 
ing  freshness  from  the  laughing  sea,  strewn  with 
its  dews,  sweet  with  its  opening  buds.  Then 
slowly  I  began,  in  order  to  give  each  word  its 
full  weight:  — 


The  Parting  79 

She  must  imagine  as  the  locale  of  the  story 
the  buildings  and  grounds  of  a  Young  Ladies' 
Seminary  —  an  old  established  American  school 
especially  liked  by  American  families  of  culture 
and  wealth.  The  opening  would  be  the  great 
day  of  the  college  year,  Commencement  Day. 
The  actual  scene  would  be  the  chapel  of  the 
college.  The  moment  would  be  that  when  the 
heroine  of  the  story,  one  of  the  graduates,  would 
rise  from  her  seat  on  the  platform  and  come 
forward  to  read  her  essay.  In  the  vast  audience 
of  old  and  young  were  strangers,  and  among 
these  was  a  stranger  youth.  As  she  stood  with 
every  eye  turned  in  beautiful  reverence  toward 
her  while  she  read,  he,  too,  looked  and  listened, 
and  the  first  love  of  his  life  came  to  him.  After 
wards,  out  on  the  sunny,  crowded  college  campus, 
he  singled  her  out  and  sought  her  acquaintance. 
She  was  standing  in  the  shade  of  one  of  the  old 
trees  on  the  lawn,  not  alone.  A  professor  of  the 
college  was  talking  with  her.  He  had  long 
loved  her,  but  the  relation  of  teacher  and  pupil 
had  constrained  him  to  silence.  Within  an  hour 
that  relation  of  constraint  had  ceased;  and  he 


8o  The  Heroine  in  Bronze 

was  there  in  the  open  of  nature  and  with  all 
the  rights  of  man.  When  the  youth  came  up, 
it  was  the  end  of  the  professor's  love-story; 
the  two  young  people  loved  each  other  at  sight 
and  irrevocably:  as  irrevocably  as  Hero  and 
Leander.  The  story  would  then  take  them 
through  the  two  or  three  years  of  his  courtship, 
with  their  misunderstandings  and  quarrels.  It 
would  bring  them  to  her  confession  of  her  love 
and  to  their  marriage.  After  marriage  it  would 
lead  them  on  through  the  experiences  of  man 
hood  and  womanhood,  of  two  lives  deepening, 
broadening,  being  slowly  harmonized. 

To  that  faint  outline  of  the  bare  story  I  added 
a  few  words  to  show  what  its  setting  would  be 
in  the  life  of  our  country :  — 

"It  may  surprise  you  to  discover  what  I  have 
discovered  —  that  the  field  in  which  this  story 
is  laid  has  never  been  entered.  If  any  American 
writer  has  ever  found  his  way  to  it,  his  presence 
there  was  too  unimportant  to  be  noticed;  if 
he  worked  in  it,  the  traces  of  his  work  were  too 
slight  to  be  memorable.  For  more  than  a 
hundred  years  the  American  College  Girl  has 


The  Parting  81 

been  the  triumphant  figure  in  the  womanhood 
of  our  civilization.  She  was  that  in  the  genera 
tion  of  our  grandmothers.  She  was  that  in 
our  mothers'  time.  She  is  more  than  ever  that 
in  the  civilization  of  the  country  now.  The 
whole  nation  has  always  been  at  work  to  bring 
her  to  perfect  flower.  It  is  she  whom  the  nation 
has  always  regarded  its  typical  bride,  its 
fittest  mate  for  the  fireside,  the  safest,  strongest 
mother  of  its  men.  Yet  no  American  writer 
has  lastingly  touched  this  mighty  truth.  In  a 
virgin  field  of  the  nation  has  stood,  overlooked 
and  unnoticed,  the  most  exquisite  figure  of  its 
girlhood  —  the  vestal  of  the  American  College. 
So  that  while  the  bare  love-theme  of  my  story 
is  as  simple  and  old  as  the  tale  of  Hero  and 
Leander,  in  our  literature  it  has  never,  with  its 
full  meaning,  found  a  place.  My  work  will  be 
something  that  no  man  has  done." 

Then  as  the  young  worker  in  silver,  having 
imparted  to  her  whom  he  loved  his  dream  of  a 
masterpiece,  might  close  the  door  of  his  distant 
shop  with  his  thought  now  returned  wholly  to 
her,  I  added  :  — 


82  The  Heroine  in  Bronze 

"It  is  a  faint,  poor  picture.  But  take  it  with 
you  !  Take  it !  Keep  it !  All  summer  let  it 
speak  to  you  of  me  and  make  me  best  remem 
bered  !  Do  not  forget  that  it  is  from  me  to 
you  !" 

Thus  I  finished  with  my  love-confession  once 
more  on  my  lips;  it  was  the  union  of  my  love 
and  my  life-work. 

Instantly  I  became  aware  of  what  all  along 
I  had  been  barely  conscious.  No  sooner  had 
I  begun  to  speak  than  the  little  movements 
which  were  spontaneous  with  her,  movements 
of  her  head  and  neck,  of  the  hands  and  arms,  of 
the  feet,  of  the  whole  body  vibrant  with  health 
and  joy,  all  these  had  ceased,  and  there  had 
come  on  one  intense  stillness — the  stillness  of 
an  entire  nature  when  it  forgets  itself  in  atten 
tion. 

Now  this  stillness  lasted.  I  waited  for  some 
word  of  pleasure,  praise,  sympathy.  None 
reached  me.  Until  with  amazement  and  pain 
and  incredulity  I  turned  to  her  for  the  meaning 
of  such  a  mystery.  As  I  did  so,  one  cloud  of 
faint  red,  the  first  I  had  ever  seen  there,  surged 


The  Parting  83 

outward  and  covered  her  from  brow  to  throat. 
It  was  Nature's  cloud  to  enwrap  her  for  protec 
tion  and  concealment.  And  she  did  not  speak 
because  Nature  spoke  for  her,  and  in  speaking 
went  back  to  a  language  more  ancient  and  in 
stinctive  and  powerful  than  words.  By  that 
changing  hue  of  the  skin,  by  that  intense  still 
ness  of  the  body,  by  the  lips  that  could  not 
open,  by  the  eyes  which  flashed  on  me  their 
startled  and  swiftly  changing  lights,  by  the 
alarm  of  the  whole  countenance  and  its  hostility 
and  abhorrence  —  by  all  these  signs  Nature 
spoke  for  her. 

The  reading  was  too  plain  to  miss,  and  I  had 
to  read  it,  and  this  was  what  I  read :  she  had 
drawn  the  inference  that  it  was  my  design  to 
make  use  of  her  College  and  of  her  College  life 
and  of  one  of  the  College  Professors  and  of 
myself  in  a  piece  of  fiction  that  was  to  be  given 
to  the  world.  That  was  the  shock.  That  was 
why  she  now  sat,  voicing  through  every  avenue 
of  her  being  except  articulate  speech  the  outcry 
of  her  astonishment  and  displeasure  and  pain. 

It  was  possible  for  me  to  imagine  some  of 


84  The  Heroine  in  Bronze 

the  pictures  that  were  passing  before  her  mind : 
the  terrifying  announcement  of  such  a  book  by 
the  publishers ;  the  crying  of  it  by  newsboys  on 
trains :  the  stacks  of  it  in  shop  windows,  on  the 
counters  of  department  stores ;  the  reviews  of  it 
in  the  press  with  dissections  of  it  —  of  herself  — 
as  a  character  in  fiction  where  her  words,  thought 
less  acts,  innocent  motives,  little  playfulnesses, 
had  all  been  caught  up  and  set  down  for  the 
reading  world  to  amuse  itself  with,  then  toss 
aside:  and  sooner  or  later  the  casting  of  the 
book  into  the  swift,  sad  wastage  of  things  with  a 
rejected  image  of  herself.  I  had  to  look  upon 
still  other  pictures  of  her  imagination  which 
must  so  have  startled  and  wounded  her  in  those 
moments:  the  finding  of  its  way  back  by  such 
a  book  to  her  College :  the  recognition  of  her 
self  as  a  character  in  it  by  her  Professors  and 
old  schoolmates  and  younger  girls :  the  dubious 
delight  with  which  they  would  read  of  a  love 
affair  between  herself  and  a  member  of  the 
faculty :  the  appearance  of  myself  as  the  tri 
umphant  hero :  the  carrying  of  our  lives  onward 
to  the  point  of  an  engagement :  the  bad  breed- 


The  Parting  85 

ing  of  it,  the  bad  manners,  the  bad  taste,  the 
bad  everything ;  the  stupidity  of  it,  the  liberty, 
the  audacity,  the  crudeness,  the  brutality,  the 
ingratitude,  the  treachery,  the  hideousness  of 
the  mercenary. 

I  sat  there,  seeing  all  this  and  saying  noth 
ing.  She  could  not  stoop  to  words  about  it; 
neither  could  I  stoop  to  words  about  it.  When 
a  man  is  wounded  by  a  woman,  what  is  he  to  do 
but  let  the  wound  bleed  under  his  coat;  least 
of  all  throw  his  coat  open  and  point  to  the  gash 
and  laceration.  I  sat  waiting  for  her  to  act  — 
to  end  her  silence  as  she  would;  and  by  that 
curious  feat  of  the  mind  which  lets  it  escape  to 
some  little  quiet  thing  far  away,  when  great 
things  are  falling  in  upon  it  with  crushing  weight, 
there  arose  in  my  memory  the  dim  story  of 
another  youth  —  a  Greek  :  How  one  summer 
day  he,  young  hunter,  with  his  pack  of  high- 
lineaged  hounds,  having  wearied  of  the  chase 
and  fain  to  seek  shade  against  the  noon-day  heat, 
drew  near  a  forest,  and  innocently  entering  it, 
approached  a  grove  with  pointed  cypresses  and 
a  running  stream,  where,  unprofaned  by  human 


86  The  Heroine  in  Bronze 

eye,  Dian  rested  in  noon-day  seclusion;  and 
how  for  this  offence  of  having  come  too  near,  she 
had  him  torn  to  pieces  by  his  own  pack.  I  was 
in  my  way  another  Actaeon  :  the  chosen  hounds 
of  my  imagination,  as  I  was  in  the  very  act  of 
joyously  cheering  them  on  to  capture  an  im 
mortal  loveliness,  had  been  set  on  me  as  the 
common  dogs  of  my  own  destruction. 

And  this  terrifying  doubt  of  me  which  had 
overwhelmed  her  from  the  direction  of  the  story 
was  not  alone.  No  doubt  ever  travels  alone; 
it  is  always  followed  by  a  flock  of  doubts ;  and 
during  these  moments  of  silence  and  suspense 
between  us,  when  the  old  was  gone  and  the  new 
not  yet  come,  the  rest  of  a  flock  of  suspicions 
and  distrusts  reached  her  and  settled  one  by 
one  in  her  mind.  When  they  were  all  arrived, 
she  was  done  with  me. 

She  rose,  and  with  her  native  courtesy  not 
lessened  but  more  guarded  she  said :  — 

"Shall  we  walk?" 

In  that  instant  she  had  discarded  me. 

Now  it  is  only  the  mind  that  can  thus  instantly 
dismiss.  The  mind  takes  hold  as  the  hand  takes 


The  Parting  87 

hold,  and  it  can  let  go  as  the  hand  lets  go.  The 
mind  can  for  a  moment,  an  hour,  a  year,  a  life 
time,  hold  to  an  idea,  a  cause,  a  man,  a  woman ; 
and  in  an  instant  it  can  drop  idea  or  cause  or 
man  or  woman.  The  mind  can  do  this.  But 
there  is  another  power  within  us  which  does  not 
thus  take  hold  and  cannot  thus  let  go  —  that 
greater  power  which  grasps  the  reins  of  our  sym 
pathies,  emotions,  affection,  attachments.  Man, 
because  he  is  unable  to  name  this  power  which 
so  rules  him,  poorly  calls  it  the  heart.  The 
heart  does  not  take  hold  as  the  hand  takes  hold, 
as  the  mind  takes  hold ;  it  cannot  let  go  as  the 
hand  lets  go,  as  the  mind  lets  go.  The  heart 
takes  hold  as  the  flesh  of  one  part  of  the  hand 
seizes  the  flesh  of  the  other  part  of  the  hand. 
And  from  what  it  has  once  grown  to,  the  heart,  if 
it  must  be  separated,  has  to  be  torn.  It  is  for 
the  heart  to  have  its  fibres  rent,  to  be  wounded 
and  to  bleed,  to  suffer  piteously  and  to  be  healed 
slowly  if  it  is  to  be  healed  ever.  The  commonest 
tragedy  of  our  everyday  lives  is  the  clinging  of 
the  heart  to  those  whom  the  mind,  long  years 
before,  may  have  rejected  and  condemned. 


88  The  Heroine  in  Bronze 

She,  as  an  act  of  her  judgment,  had  discarded 
me  in  a  moment's  brevity.  But  she  had  still 
to  take  leave  of  me  in  the  name  of  those  other 
things  that  were  not  thus  to  be  dismissed.  And 
that  was  why,  perhaps,  in  rising  she  did  not  at 
once  return  to  the  house.  In  her  decision  she 
had  already  returned  to  the  house,  but  her  heart 
lingered  in  the  garden. 

And  now  as  she  started,  with  me  walking 
beside  her  in  silence,  there  came  out  what  was 
so  fine  in  her  nature,  so  inbred,  so  strong.  Her 
excitement  and  emotion  increased  every  in 
stant  ;  and  against  these  she  had  to  draw  more 
and  more  upon  her  self-control :  there  must  be 
no  disorder  about  anything  so  grave  and  sad 
as  this  —  no  ungentleness  —  no  outbreak  — 
no  disturbance  of  the  right  values  of  herself. 
Out  of  this  struggle  to  come  victorious,  she 
had  to  gain  time;  and  to  gain  time  she  began 
to  break  off  a  flower  here  and  there  along  the 
garden  ramble  and  to  employ  her  words  on 
these. 

"This  is  a  nosegay  to  me  from  the  garden  — 
for  the  steamer,"  she  said  tremblingly.  Thus 


The  Parting  89 

she  plucked  her  flowers,  and  thus  we  passed 
along,  I  awkward  and  wretched  and  angry  and 
wronged  beyond  endurance.  She  spoke  trifles 
about  this  flower  and  that  flower ;  I  replied  with 
trifles.  She  laughed  at  nothing,  I  laughed  at 
nothing.  She  sought  calmness,  I  sought  calm 
ness.  I  had  offered  her  my  best,  and  she  had 
made  the  worst  of  it ;  and  as  we  faced  our  trag 
edy,  we  laughed  and  spoke  of  blossoms  broken 
from  the  bushes. 

We  reached  the  end  of  the  ramble,  and  there 
before  us  was  the  iron  seat.  Once  in  the  case 
of  another  man's  misfortune  I  had  amused  my 
self  by  giving  it  a  name.  I  had  chosen  to  think 
that  there  she  discarded  her  not  quite  worthy 
suitors.  Now  I  confronted  it;  now  it  was  my 
turn. 

She  hesitated,  standing  beside  a  shrub  and 
nervously  twisting  a  spray  of  it  for  a  bit  of 
green ;  not  looking  at  me  in  the  meantime ;  un 
til  with  a  voice  which  could  not  control  itself 
she  broke  through  all  reserve  with  one  warning 
and  commanding  question :  — 

"Are  you  going  to  write  that  story?" 


9O  The  Heroine  in  Bronze 

She  was  giving  me  a  last  chance.  I  had  clearly 
seen  how  intense  was  her  hostility,  how  surely 
it  would  bring  the  end  of  everything  between 
us.  Therefore  my  better  judgment  might  have 
come  to  my  rescue;  and  with  better  judgment 
a  change  of  purpose.  She  afforded  me  this 
opportunity  —  but  the  question  had  cost  her  a 
great  effort. 

With  all  the  deference  I  could  express,  with  all 
regret,  I  replied  :  — 

"I  am  going  to  write  the  story." 

She  twisted  off  the  tough  stem  and  turned 
to  the  seat,  and  there,  seating  herself  at  one 
end,  she  scattered  her  flowers  in  her  lap  and 
began  to  put  them  together. 

Before  I  attempt  to  set  down  here  the  rest  of 
our  conversation,  it  should  be  borne  in  mind  that 
this  is  done  only  as  memory  brings  back  the 
words,  and  memory  in  such  a  case  is  a  poor  his 
torian.  We  were  both  deeply  moved ;  we  were 
greatly  excited  :  within  an  hour  I  could  not  have 
recalled  our  exact  words.  Instead  of  an  hour, 
years  have  passed  since  then.  Great  changes 


The  Parting  91 

have  taken  place  in  life.  Other  feelings  have 
replaced  those  of  that  morning;  quietude  has 
settled  on  that  scene :  and  a  light  falls  on  it 
now  that  did  not  rest  there  then. 

Our  words  were  quick,  living  words,  torn  from 
us,  not  well  ordered  and  well  wrought  together, 
little  by  little,  like  the  links  of  a  finished  chain 
which  has  grown  cold.  Doubtless  not  one 
thing  about  her  belonging  to  those  years  could 
I  now  set  down  as  it  actually  was :  I  know  the 
truth,  but  I  cannot  recall  the  little  things  that 
made  up  the  truth.  So  that  when  I  attempt  to 
write  down  what  she  said,  you  must  believe 
that  time  and  memory  and  emotion  have  all 
been  at  work,  covering  her  actual  words  as  with 
mosses,  shedding  on  them  softened  shadows 
and  lights,  and  throwing  around  them  that 
tender  veil  of  atmosphere  which  is  distance. 

As  for  myself,  as  for  what  I  said  to  her,  short 
shrift  will  be  made  of  that. 

She  had  taken  her  seat  then,  and  having  scat 
tered  her  flowers  in  her  lap,  sought  for  one  with 
which  to  start  her  nosegay.  And  keeping  her 


92  The  Heroine  in  Bronze 

eyes  always  on  her  work  she  inquired  with  the 
courtesy  of  a  stranger  to  another  stranger :  — 
"Will  you  go  home  this  summer?" 
I,   watching   the  movements   of  her   fingers 
and  the  shifting  shadows  on  her  face,  made  my 
quiet  reply :  — 

"I  expect  to  stay  in  New  York." 
"But  if  you  should  go  home,  you  might  not 
return  ?  " 

"If  I  went,  I  would  return." 
"You  expect  to  live  on  in  New  York,  then  ?" 
"I  expect  to  live  on  in  New  York." 
She  dropped  the  flowers  she  had  started  with 
and  began  over  again  the  making  of  the  nose 
gay- 

"A  summer  brings  so  many  changes.  People 
go  away,  leaving  people;  when  they  return, 
everything  has  changed  for  them  all.  They 
may  still  be  near,  but  they  do  not  meet  any 
more :  the  changes  of  a  summer  that  come  to 
us!" 

"It  is  an  old  saying,  it  is  an  old  truth." 
"New  York  is  so  vast  a  place.     Even  if  peo 
ple  do  not  go  away,  they  are  thrown  together 


The  Parting  93 

for  a  while,  and  then  they  are  thrown  apart. 
Acquaintanceships  begin  in  New  York  we  do 
not  quite  know  how ;  and  they  come  to  an  end, 
we  do  not  quite  know  how." 

I  made  no  comment. 

"And  then  the  United  States  is  so  vast. 
Strangers  who  come  to  New  York  from  distant 
parts  of  the  country  to  live  —  I  am  afraid  that 
we  who  have  always  lived  here  never  quite  get 
over  thinking  of  them  as  —  strangers.  So 
often  they  do  not  look  at  life  as  we  look  at  life. 
They  do  things  that  we  may  not  do.  As  we 
may  do  things  that  they  do  not  do.  There  are 
differences.  For  a  while  we  get  along  together, 
then  after  a  while  we  do  not  get  along  any  more. 
We  do  not  understand  just  how.  The  differ 
ences  have  come  up  meantime;  I  suppose  that 
is  the  reason.  And  that  means  that  we  were 
never  together  from  the  first." 

"Not  every  stranger  who  comes  to  New  York 
from  a  distance  feels  that  way.  There  is  not 
a  different  New  York  nature,  but  the  same 
human  nature." 

After  a  longer  search  among  her  flowers  for 


94  The  Heroine  in  Bronze 

the  right  one  which  seemed  always  harder  to 
find  now  as  the  bouquet  approached  completion, 
she  went  on  with  her  own  thought,  not  replying 
to  my  thought :  — 

"Perhaps  that  was  the  reason  my  acquaint 
ance  with  you  from  the  first  was  so  different.  It 
was  something  apart  because  you  were  apart; 
you  were  not  like  New  York  people ;  not  quite 
like  any  one  I  had  known  —  " 

Then  something  happened  which  lingers  most 
vividly  in  my  memory :  it  will  be  the  last  thing  in 
life,  I  know,  that  I  shall  forget :  — 

She  dropped  her  nosegay  in  her  lap,  holding  it 
with  both  hands ;  and  in  entire  forgetfulness  of 
it  she  sat  looking  across  her  garden  —  looking 
into  distance  —  with  eyes  of  mystical  sincerity. 
And  after  a  little  she  began  to  speak,  less  to  me 
than  as  if  reckoning  up  life  with  herself :  — 

"All  my  life  one  thing  has  haunted  me:  on 
the  horizon  of  my  thought  —  at  a  dim  distance 
there  has  always  been  a  kind  of  beautiful  sacred 
country :  a  land  I  have  often  looked  to  when  I 
did  not  wish  to  see  anything  else.  I  suppose  it 
began  to  be  built  up  in  me  when  a  child.  My 


The  Parting  95 

mother  was  from  the  country  and  always  pined 
for  the  country  and  liked  country  life  and  coun 
try  people  and  country  ways.  Perhaps  it  was 
her  talks  that  first  built  up  in  me  the  visions  of 
an  ideal  land  —  my  country.  I  cannot  quite  de 
scribe  what  it  was.  Except  that  I  believed  in  it. 
The  right  things  were  there,  the  true  things,  and 
things  most  dear.  As  I  grew  to  girlhood,  I 
began  to  think  that  out  of  it  sometime  some  one 
would  come  to  me.  When  I  met  you,  I  do  not 
know  why,  but  you  came  from  your  distant 
country  and  began  to  tell  me  how  beautiful  it 
was ;  and  I,  looking  within  myself,  saw  my 
land.  My  land  was  like  your  land ;  and  in 
coming  to  me  out  of  yours,  you  seemed  to  come 
to  me  out  of  mine." 

She  took  up  her  flowers  again  and  went  on 
arranging  them :  — 

"I  suppose  it  was  a  girl's  dream.  I  walked 
too  far  and  too  fast  toward  my  dream." 

"I  not  far  enough  toward  mine." 

She  put  the  last  flower  into  her  nosegay  and 
turned  it  round  and  round,  looking  at  it  in 
silence ;  then  in  silence  she  touched  it  to  her 


g6  The  Heroine  in  Bronze 

eyes,  one  after  the  other,  as  mute  balm  for 
their  threatened  pain. 

Until  with  one  ungovernable  impulse  she  broke 
through  restraint  and  asked  with  cruel  stern 
ness  :  — 

"How  did  you  ever  happen  to  come  to  New 
York  in  the  first  place?" 

"I  wanted  to  do  great  things.  I  meant  to  do 
great  things.  And  I  mean  to  do  them." 

"You  mean  your  —  work  ? " 

"I  mean  my  work." 

We  had  come  back  to  the  subject  that  divided 
us:  as  though  the  mention  of  it  dealt  her  a 
second  indignity,  she  rose  and  started  toward 
the  house. 

And  thus  it  was  all  over  between  us.  Perhaps 
it  is  a  woman's  nature  to  pour  out  some  little 
tenderness  on  what  it  is  sending  away.  What 
matters  it,  since  she  has  saved  herself,  if  she 
threw  her  charity  to  the  discarded.  As  we 
walked  along  she  said :  — 

"I  hope  you  will  be  happy." 

"I  intend  to  be  happy,"  I  quickly  retorted, 
but  with  no  faith  in  my  words. 


The  Parting  97 

She  glanced  surprisedly  at  me  as  though  my 
boast  had  done  her  a  wrong.  A  moment  later 
what  seemed  a  difficult  concession  was  wrung 
from  her :  — 

" Almost  you  persuade  one  to  believe  in  you 
as  you  believe  in  yourself." 

I  answered  in  wrath :  — 

"I  do  not  care  for  people  who  almost  do  things ; 
for  people  who  almost  love  or  almost  hate ;  for 
people  who  almost  succeed  or  almost  fail;  for 
people  who  almost  believe  or  do  not  believe." 

She  drew  herself  up  :  — 

"A  woman  can  feel  that  way  about  a  man.  I 
feel  that  way.  I  could  not  marry  a  man  who  was 
almost  something:  almost  a  lawyer,  almost  a 
soldier,  almost  a  painter,  almost  a  writer." 

"You  are  right." 

We  were  near  the  house.  She  spoke  with  a 
kinder  note  the  next  time.  It  was  more  of  her 
charity :  — 

"If  a  girl  loved  you,  love  would  be  everything 
to  her.  She  would  throw  everything  else  away 
—  her  judgment,  cautions,  reasons.  Some  day 
you  may  find  a  girl  who  would  give  her  life  for 


98  The  Heroine  in  Bronze 

a  summer  with  you  away  from  the  world :  only 
herself  and  yourself  in  some  spot.  Sometime  a 
girl  may  love  you  well  enough  to  do  that." 

"I  hope  so." 

Again  she  glanced  at  me  as  though  my  words 
had  hurt  her. 

We  went  up  the  steps  of  the  veranda,  and  she 
turned  toward  the  garden.  As  her  glance  rested 
on  the  marble  seat  under  the  ivy,  she  passed  one 
hand  quickly  across  her  eyes  as  if  to  brush  away 
the  mournful  sight  of  it. 

In  the  hall  some  of  the  trunks  had  been  brought 
down.  She  stopped  at  them.  In  each  of  us 
there  must  have  been  at  the  same  moment  that 
vague  swell  of  uneasiness  which  fills  those  who 
are  about  to  separate  at  the  sea.  The  misunder 
standings  of  life  !  The  thoughtless,  rash,  cruel 
words  may  be  the  last !  She  stood  looking  down 
at  the  trunks  and  she  left  her  flowers  on  one  with 
some  thought  perhaps  of  coming  back  there 
when  I  was  gone. 

We  reached  the  front  door,  and  I  held  out  my 
hand :  — 

"Good-by!" 


The  Parting  99 

She  clasped  her  hands  behind  her  head  and 
pressed  her  head  back  against  them.  Then  she 
turned  her  face  sidewise  as  on  a  pillow :  — 

"Good-by!" 

As  I  went  down  the  steps  blindly,  I  turned. 
She  had  come  to  the  door  and  was  standing  in 
the  doorway  with  her  hands  still  clasped  behind 
her  head,  and  she  was  pressing  her  head  back 
against  them  in  bitter  effort.  With  the  sad  blue 
of  the  sea  in  her  eyes  she  asked :  — 

"If  anything  really  were  to  happen,  would 
you  —  would  you  —  understand?" 

Her  eyes  suddenly  closed,  and  tears  rushed  out 
and  hung  on  the  lashes. 

I  sprang  back  to  her. 

"No,  no,  no!"  she  murmured  to  herself, 
stepping  back  and  closing  the  door  quickly. 


CHAPTER  I 

kHUS  we  parted:  she  to  her  sum 
mer  amid  the  green  valleys,  around 
the  blue  lakes,  beneath  the  snow- 
p  peaks  of  the  Alps ;  I  to  my  summer 
in  a  pygmy  apartment  with  an  out 
look  on  tin  roofs  and  kitchen  chimneys,  and 
around  the  horizon  —  as  'my  mountains  against 
the  sky-line  —  the  far-separated  towers  of  the 
city,  its  torrid  pinnacles  of  steel  and  stone.  She 
to  leisure  and  pleasure  and  to  her  wooing  by  my 
rivals;  I  to  work  and  loneliness,  waiting  and 
doubt.  She  with  a  nature  torn  between  casting 
me  off  and  drawing  me  nearer ;  I  with  a  nature 
welded  into  one  sorer  want  of  her  and  into  the 
will  to  win  her  yet. 

When  she  closed  the  door  against  me  and 
against  the  temptation  of  her  heart  to  yield,  I 
did  not  return  to  my  apartment.  And  that  day 
I  did  not  work.  The  stillness,  the  concentration, 

of  work   was   impossible ;  the  mere  thought  of 
103 


104  The  Heroine  in  Bronze 

confinement  within  the  paltry  walls,  which  were 
the  material  measure  of  my  importance  in  the 
world,  brought  rebellion  to  both  mind  and  body. 
I  was  swept  on  toward  the  lives  of  men,  the  storm 
within  me  moving  toward  the  storm  without  — 
to  the  vast  mortal  plains  where  the  tempests  of 
millions  are  never  quieted.  All  that  day  I 
wandered  over  the  city,  an  unobserved  specta 
tor  in  the  ancient  open-air  theatre  of  the  great 
passions.  As  into  many  lands  I  entered ;  I 
passed  as  through  many  races ;  traversed  many 
an  age,  met  many  a  story. 

I  beheld  Abraham  as  he  dwelt  troubled  of  old 
on  the  Plains  of  Shinar.  I  saw  Job  crouched 
faithful  amid  the  ashes  of  Uz.  In  an  open  square 
I  encountered  Rebecca  with  her  pitcher;  and 
away  from  me  once  Ruth  went,  not  walking 
bare-footed  amid  the  cleanness  of  alien  corn,  but 
slouching  foul-shod  amid  the  squalor  of  alien 
alleys.  I  heard  Shylock  demanding  across  a 
counter  the  due  and  forfeit  of  his  bond.  In  the 
Italian  quarter,  behind  a  scarlet  rag  which  cur 
tained  a  doorway,  I  came  upon  Tarquin  leering 
at  chaste  Virginia.  Along  the  city  shores  of  the 


The  Waiting  105 

Greeks,  leaning  against  a  door-post  of  a  tenement, 
as  once  she  leaned  against  the  golden  splendors  of 
her  proud  father's  hall,  I  discovered  Nausicaa; 
and  I  heard  fall  from  her  lips  the  words  which  the 
world  has  never  ceased  hearing  in  memory  — 
stricken  Nausicaa  who  loved  and  was  not  loved 
in  return:  "Farewell,  stranger  !  See  that  thou 
remember  me  in  thy  country  on  a  day."  Where 
the  Sicilians  throng  I  met  young  Daphnis,  tune- 
fulest  of  herdsmen,  without  his  crook  and  pipe 
and  goatskin  mantle,  but  not  without  his  thick 
locks  and  tawny  skin  and  resistless  smile,  as  cen 
turies  ago  Theocritus  found  him  idling,  comely, 
shapely,  on  the  slopes  of  woody  yEtna  —  home 
of  fires  and  snows.  Down  at  the  pier  of  a  Ger 
man  steamship  company  on  the  seaward  edge  of 
a  waiting  crowd  I  saw  Elsa  with  her  rapt  gaze 
turned  down  the  bay ;  and  as  the  mighty  steamer 
approached,  I  saw  a  warm  Lohengrin  just  come 
from  the  valley  of  the  Scheldt  —  yellow-bearded, 
yellow-haired,  blue-eyed,  arrived  never  to  leave 
her  for  the  whiteness  of  Montsalvat.  Through 
the  windows  of  a  French  pastry  shop  I  saw 
Pierrot  flour-sprinkled  ;  and  darting  into  the 


io6  The  Heroine  in  Bronze 

shop  from  a  rear  room  I  saw  Columbine  fly  at 
him,  take  his  pasty  cheeks  between  her  thumbs 
and  forefingers,  and  administer  to  his  proper 
feature  things  well  understood  by  them;  then 
disappear  again  into  the  mysteries  of  her  work 
and  her  joy.  Once  I  thought  I  had  a  glimpse  of 
Highland  Mary.  Once  a  street  Ophelia  of  some 
unprincely  Hamlet  passed  me  with  eyes  too  eager 
for  the  water's  brink.  Once  I  almost  brushed 
against  rouged  Carmen  as  she  wound  in  and  out 
amid  bold-eyed  men,  smoking  and  drinking  under 
an  awning  on  the  sidewalk;  I  caught  the  fra 
grance  of  her  crimson  rose  as  it  drooped  over  the 
passion-flower  of  her  withered  heart.  And  once, 
near  a  church,  I  beheld,  moving  slowly  toward  it 
in  spiritual  revery,  saintly  Elizabeth  —  going  to 
the  shrine  for  Tannhauser  whom  Venus  held  fet 
tered  to  the  mountain,  while  her  own  prayers  for 
him  took  flight  for  Heaven. 

As  I  wandered  that  summer  day  these  stories 
I  saw  and  many  others  in  imagination  and  re 
membrance.  I  matched  my  own  story  with  many 
of  them,  understanding  it  more  clearly  in  their 
distant  lights,  finding  it  overcast  by  their  kindred 


The  Waiting  107 

shadows.  Far  back  I  tracked  the  drama  of  the 
heart  of  men,  forever  changing,  never  changed. 

Toward  sundown,  miles  away,  as  twilight  be 
gan  to  sift  down  upon  the  streets  and  the  side 
walks  to  become  thronged  with  people  hurrying 
to  many  points,  I  noticed  how  on  every  face,  in 
whatsoever  direction  turned,  there  rested  the  same 
expression  —  the  common  human  look  of  going 
home;  and  suddenly  I  shared  in  this  universal 
instinct  and  grew  homesick  for  my  shelter.  In 
the  morning  I  had  rebelled  against  it;  it  had 
repelled  me,  irked  me ;  now  the  idea  of  being  in 
it  again  brought  a  kind  of  familiar  peace.  Other 
wise,  too,  the  tragic  mood  of  the  day  had  ebbed ; 
its  pain  and  sadness  had  left  me ;  buoyancy  and 
joyfulness  had  come  in  as  an  evening  tide  from  a 
tranquil  sea.  Soon  returning  by  the  quickest 
route  I  stood  at  the  door  of  my  apartment  with 
the  key  ready  to  insert  in  the  lock ;  and  by  that 
time  I  had  regained  the  high  spirits  which  are 
the  rock  of  my  birthright. 

Please,  if  you  care  to  enter  my  legal  domicile 
with  me,  be  in  high  spirits  yourself.  Nothing  de 
spondent  ever  gets  across  my  threshold ;  though 


io8  The  Heroine  in  Bronze 

it  may  be  that  I  shall  not  escape  the  lot  of  man 
and  in  years  to  come  open  a  Doorway  to  Sorrows ; 
there  to  sit,  long  looking  out  upon  the  Fields  of 
Sadness.  Enter  cheerfully,  and  do  not  let  your 
cheerfulness  be  made  to  run  away  at  the  sight  of 
cheerless  things,  of  poor  mean  worthless  things. 
For  what  you  shall  see  will  be  most  unlike  all 
that  you  have  by  this  time  associated  with  her 
luxury.  No  rose-garden  nor  marble  seat  nor 
inestimable  grass  nor  verandas  and  salons  for 
me;  but  res  augusta  domi  which  is  very  good 
Latin  for  the  American  day  of  small  things. 

And  that  small  day  was  my  meridian  day:  I 
dwelt  in  the  cloudless  noontide  splendor  of  want. 

With  the  key  in  the  lock  I  stooped  to  pick  up 
the  evening  newspaper  —  the  six  cents  a  week 
chronicle  of  the  world ;  and  I  drew  from  under  the 
door-sill  a  few  letters,  the  corners  of  which  pro 
truded.  Business  letters  were  always  my  first 
concern,  though  there  was  not  a  business  for  any 
human  being  to  write  to  me  about.  Entering,  I 
threw  up  the  window-sashes  to  replace  with 
fresh  air  the  stale  heated  atmosphere  which  had 
been  in  the  rooms  since  morning,  when  the 


The  Waiting  109 

chambermaid  had  fastened  the  foul  air  carefully 
in.  One  of  my  much-perforated,  sand-colored 
window-shades  had  a  worn-out  catch ;  and  a  care 
less  touch  set  it  off  like  a  fly-wheel  out  of  gear. 
This  was  one  of  the  days  when  the  shade  wound 
itself  at  the  top  of  the  window,  tangling  with  it 
the  end  of  the  cord;  I  must  therefore  mount  a 
chair  and  draw  it  down  into  place.  When  I 
have  become  an  author  great  and  gray,  I  shall, 
like  Goethe  and  Jean  Jaques,  write  my  autobiog 
raphy  and  trace  for  the  good  of  my  lesser  fellow- 
men  the  road  of  my  exceptional  career.  Among 
the  little  things  that  had  the  honor  to  train  me, 
some  space  shall  be  devoted  to  this  window- 
shade  ;  I  duly  setting  it  down  that  an  impatient 
youth  was  by  it  disciplined  to  patience, — or  to 
impatience,  —  it  is  yet  uncertain  which. 

Having  descended  from  the  chair,  I  sat  down 
in  it  and  looked  over  my  letters.  Always  in 
those  lean  years  I  hoped  that  one  might  be  from 
my  publisher  with  some  kind  of  miraculous  good 
tidings.  It  is  incomprehensible  to  me  still 
why  my  self-importance  was  always  increased 
even  by  a  letter  from  him  of  no  consequence 


no  The  Heroine  in  Bronze 

whatsoever.  I  think  at  that  stage  of  my  career 
I  should  have  been  puffed  up  by  his  condescen 
sion  if  he  had  notified  me  by  post  that  he  ex 
pected  me  to  starve  —  and  would  help.  To-day 
there  was  no  letter  from  him.  Those  in  my  hand 
represented  New  York  romances. 

In  such  typical  apartment  buildings  the  poorer 
tenants  are  intermingled  with  people  of  wealth 
and  social  and  professional  awfulness ;  but  there 
is  no  partiality  in  the  attentions  which  all  receive 
from  advertisers  of  their  wares.  Thus  it  came 
about  that  I,  of  no  consequence  to  any  one  in  a 
commercial  way,  was  enabled  vicariously  to 
enter  into  the  sensations  of  the  rich  and  power 
ful.  A  famished  spider,  I  was  permitted  to  sit 
at  the  centre  of  a  golden  web ;  and  hundreds  of 
firms  in  the  course  of  a  season  agitated  the  web 
and  warned  me  to  run  out  and  seize  my  easy  prey 
—  on  my  own  terms. 

That  day  five  letters  were  dropped  into  the 
glittering  net.  A  real  estate  agent,  having  com 
plimented  me  upon  being  a  gentleman  of  such 
luxurious  tastes  that  I  could  not  possibly  do 
without  a  residence  in  both  town  and  country, 


The  Waiting  in 

felt  sure  that  I  should  like  to  purchase  on  allur 
ing  terms  a  fine  old  estate  on  Long  Island.  I  con 
curred  in  this  sentiment  of  the  agent.  A  wine 
merchant  begged  the  privilege  of  reminding  me 
that  I  had  not  yet  enjoyed  at  my  dinner  table 
some  of  his  finest  grades  of  wines;  otherwise  I 
would  have  opened  an  account  with  him  which 
he  now  insisted  that  I  do ;  and  on  the  list  of  his 
vintages  he  had  made  his  personal  little  pencil 
mark  opposite  Mouton  Rothschild.  I  upheld  this 
contention  of  the  wine  dealer.  And  even  a  pencil 
mark  which  connected  me  with  anything  called 
Rothschild  was  a  stimulant.  Even  though  it 
were  but  a  wine  called  mutton.  Even  had  it 
been  mutton  called  wine.  A  third  letter  was 
from  a  general  agency  which  stated  that  it  was 
prepared  to  do  everything.  But  I  thought  that 
an  agency  prepared  to  do  everything  was  pre 
pared  to  do  too  much.  A  fourth  letter  was 
addressed  to  my  wife.  It  conveyed  to  her  the 
intelligence  that  her  name  had  been  placed  on  a 
favored  list  of  charge-persons;  and  that  upon 
" visiting  the  emporium"  she  would  merely  be 
put  to  the  trouble  of  mentioning  her  name  to  the 


ii2  The  Heroine  in  Bronze 

saleslady  and  of  buying  whatever  she  liked.  I 
bowed  myself  to  the  dust  before  this  distinction 
accorded  my  spouse.  Still  it  was  rather  disquiet 
ing  to  have  even  a  manufactured  wife  thus 
publicly  designated  as  a  charge-person ;  it  almost 
suggested  that  a  real  wife  might  become  a 
charge.  The  last  letter  was  signed  with  the 
formidable  name  of  Lucile.  The  writer  stated 
that  having  held  various  positions  of  a  secre 
tarial  character,  she  had  now  opened  an  office  of 
her  own  and  was  prepared  to  put  the  manuscript 
of  inexperienced  young  authors  into  shape  to 
secure  their  acceptance  from  the  leading  pub 
lishers  at  the  highest  rates  of  royalty :  she  gave 
these  manuscripts,  she  announced,  an  unpreju 
diced  reading  and  supplied  ideas  to  strengthen 
and  embellish.  I  acknowledged  with  humble 
ness  the  amazing  wisdom  and  goodness  of 
Lucile. 

These  gallantries  sometimes  led  me  to  wonder 
what  would  have  become  of  the  remnant  of 
Don  Quixote's  brain,  had  he  armed  himself  and 
ridden  forth  toward  the  chivalries  of  New  York 
trade.  What  might  have  been  the  fate  of  a 


The  Waiting  113 

tradesman  now  and  then  as  the  Don  ran  him 
through  with  the  spear  that  knew  no  shams  ? 

May  I  now  proceed  to  say  that  I  leased  what 
is  called  a  bachelor  apartment,  though  why 
bachelor  is  not  quite  clear.  On  what  ground 
should  a  tenant  be  required  to  pay  for  an  ob 
jectionable  epithet  affixed  to  his  abode?  If 
his  legal  domicile  must  be  denned  with  reference 
to  the  nuptial  bond,  why  not  unmarried  apart 
ment?  Better  unmarried  than  bachelor  even 
for  an  apartment.  A  bachelor  is  a  mere  act 
of  Providence;  being  unmarried  is  a  state  of 
grace. 

My  apartment  was  at  the  rear  of  a  magnificent 
structure,  all  the  family  apartments  of  which 
were  at  the  front ;  so  that  the  aggregation  could 
have  been  regarded  as  the  house  of  lords  and 
the  house  of  commons :  the  lords  to  the  front 
and  the  commons  to  the  rear.  I  was  then  a 
very  junior  member  of  the  house  of  commons. 
My  apartment  consisted  of  a  front  door,  a 
hallway,  a  cranny  dubbed  kitchenette,  an 
inquisitorial  bath,  and  two  rooms,  in  one  of 
which  I  was  expected  to  sleep  and  in  the  other 


ii4  The  Heroine  in  Bronze 

not  to  sleep.  If  I  had  taken  a  position  midway 
of  my  hall,  extended  my  right  arm  toward  the 
front  door,  my  left  arm  toward  the  bath,  my 
right  leg  toward  the  room  in  which  I  remained 
conscious,  and  my  left  leg  toward  the  room  in 
which  I  remained  unconscious,  I  might  accu 
rately  have  been  described  as  occupying  my 
apartment.  The  whole  space  had  the  size  of 
one  room  in  the  old  Southern  farm-house  which 
was  my  birthplace.  As  a  child,  I  had  been 
accustomed  to  partition  that:  in  one  corner 
was  a  stable,  in  another  a  garden,  in  a  third 
a  battle-field,  and  in  the  fourth  a  creek,  where 
I  sat  on  the  foot  of  the  bed  and  fished. 

I  now  turned  on  the  water  for  my  bath.  It 
trickled  through  the  pipes  slowly  and  was  too 
warm  to  refresh;  so  that  in  the  kitchenette  I 
chipped  off  a  piece  of  ice  from  my  daily  costly 
lump  and  dropped  it  in.  One  extravagance  I 
would  not  deny  myself  —  to  bathe  in  my  own 
melted  ice.  No  torture  of  thirst  within  could 
deter  me  from  this  cutaneous  magnificence  out 
side.  While  the  tub  filled,  I  slipped  off  the 
clothes  of  the  day  and  got  into  my  bathrobe 


The  Waiting  115 

and  laid  out  fresh  linen  on  my  bed.  Then  I 
threw  myself  into  an  easy-chair  —  easy  as  to 
the  manufacturer's  model,  but  uneasy  as  to  giv 
ing  way  under  the  sitter's  weight  —  and  with 
my  eyes  shut  I  listened  to  that  satirical  trickle 
from  the  watershed  of  the  Adirondacks.  It  was 
my  nearest  approach  to  the  forest  melody  of 
swift  water,  to  some  cold  stream  surrounded  by 
moisture  and  greenness  over  which  ferns  leaned, 
and  near  which  a  wood-thrush  breathed  softly 
on  his  wood- viol. 

I  had  my  bath  and  put  on  my  fresh  clothes, 
and  then  laid  out  the  things  for  my  dinner ;  for 
I  was  my  own  butler  and  set  my  own  dinner 
table.  This  was  a  card-table  covered  with 
green  baize  and  upheld  by  four  folding  legs.  In 
the  case  of  any  four  things  in  this  world,  one 
of  them  would  be  somehow  wrong;  and  one  of 
my  four  folding  legs  had  a  permanent  fold  — 
the  growing  incurable  ailment  of  a  leg.  The 
baize  was  not  all  greenness  either,  as  of  yore,  but 
had  its  yellows  and  browns  of  upsets  and  down 
falls. 

The  business  of  setting  my  table  brings  into 


n6  The  Heroine  in  Bronze 

notice  the  richest  furnishings  of  my  establish 
ment.  This  was  the  family  plate,  I  being  the 
family ;  and  you  must  know  about  my  dishes. 
Though  a  book  lover,  I  collect  no  costly  books 
nor  ever  shall,  whatever  wealth  the  future  may 
have  in  store.  Books  to  me  are  souls.  Souls 
in  this  world  must  have  bodies,  and  books  must 
be  bound.  But  my  affection  for  a  human  soul 
goes  out  most  freely  to  it  when  it  is  most  simply 
dressed.  Can  any  one  love  a  monarch  glitter 
ing  on  his  throne  ?  Let  a  king  be  uniformed  as 
a  common  soldier ;  and  if  he  is  ever  to  win  the 
love  of  human  hearts,  he  will  win  it  then  —  as 
fighting  man  and  human  equal.  So  a  great 
book  to  me  is  no  longer  approachable,  lovable, 
when  swaddled  in  another  man's  tinsel.  Why 
should  a  pilgrim,  reverently  on  his  way  toward 
the  soul  of  a  book,  be  bidden  to  stop  and  worship 
its  coat  and  pantaloons,  designed  by  a  nobody  ? 
Why  set  such  antiquarian  store  on  the  vanities 
of  any  book-tailor?  What  was  Aldus  but  a 
book-tailor  ?  What  was  Elzevir  but  a  costumer, 
to  be  ranked  no  higher  than  other  designers 
of  fashion  plates?  Who  wants  his  Socrates 


The  Waiting  117 

tricked  out  like  an  actor  strutting  the  stage  or 
incrusted  like  an  archbishop  overlording  it  at 
the  altar?  Who  cares  to  have  his  light  of  the 
Gospels  illuminated  by  dark  fingers?  Let 
Horace  be  garbed  in  his  poems  for  all  time  as 
what  he  was  on  his  Sabine  farm  in  his  own  day 
—  a  soul  of  unaffected  gentlemanliness  and  fas 
tidious  simplicity. 

But  glass  and  china  !  Here  is  no  question  of 
souls,  but  of  bodies  only.  Your  finest  piece  of 
glass  has  no  spirit ;  your  richest  dish  lies  below 
the  level  of  emotion ;  and  so  you  may  starve 
even  your  own  spirit  to  buy  these  objects  of 
mere  fragile  bodily  beauty.  That  is  why  I 
often  went  without  a  meal  for  the  sake  of  buy 
ing  a  dish. 

This  buying  habit  had  begun  very  naturally. 
I  had  arrived  in  New  York  with  one  treasure, 
a  massive  old  silver  tankard  which  was  all  that 
fell  to  me  out  of  the  wreck  of  family  fortunes. 
That  tankard  once  symbolized  the  manners 
and  customs  of  whole  people  and  period,  it 
being  the  huge  hearty  cup  which  was  freshly 
filled  and  offered  first  to  the  arrived  guest  and 


n8  The  Heroine  in  Bronze 

was  then  passed  from  lip  to  lip  among  the 
members  of  the  household  in  which  his  life, 
his  comfort,  his  character  had  become  sacred. 

Around  this  cup  of  good-will  and  good  cheer 
and  of  simpler  faith  in  simpler  men  I  had  built 
my  scant  collection.  In  one  of  the  famous  es 
tablishments  on  Fifth  Avenue,  on  the  second 
floor,  I  found  a  rack  on  which  were  exposed  for 
sale  odd  pieces,  remnants  from  breakage  of 
glass  and  china.  And  here,  waiting  for  me,  I 
discovered  my  morning  coffee  cup  —  deep, 
man-satisfying,  hero-nurturing.  If  Wotan  had 
drunk  coffee  instead  of  mead,  this  should  have 
been  his  cup.  Such  curvature  of  the  rim  there 
was  to  fit  a  big  eager  immortal  mouth ;  such  a 
true  Walhalla  handle  through  which  to  push 
an  immortal  forefinger  until  it  met  an  immortal 
thumb.  This  cup  that  same  day  attached  to 
its  service  a  well-set-up  cream-pitcher  —  an  elf 
of  a  pitcher  cut  of  Nibelung  —  a  gold-digging 
imp  who  must  henceforth  bring  to  me  on  his 
back  every  morning  a  jug  of  golden  cream. 

I  pass  over  luncheon  with  the  mere  mention 
of  one  magnificent  plate  (the  only  one  I  had),  no 


The  Waiting  119 

doubt  patterned  and  glazed  for  an  English  duke : 
it  being  of  the  finest  English  china  and  designed 
to  hold  the  juiciest  of  Southdown  chops :  the 
duke  got  the  chops,  but  I  got  the  china. 

As  to  dinner  I  had  a  truly  royal  plate  for  game. 
In  the  bottom  was  painted  a  scene  of  the  autumn 
fields  —  a  patch  of  brown  grass,  and  half -hidden 
in  the  grass  a  quail.  I  might  explain  that  the 
painted  quail  was  the  only  game  that  ever  ap 
peared  in  the  bottom  of  my  plate.  I  had  estab 
lished  in  the  basement  ten  floors  down  a  pre 
carious  cooking  arrangement  with  the  janitor; 
and  many  fuliginous  things  rose  to  me  from  the 
smoky  pit. 

But  I  had  always  shrunk  from  the  spectacle 
of  blithe  Bob  White's  arriving  at  my  window 
lattice  by  means  of  so  solemn  and  stately  a 
catafalque.  Instead  of  devouring  him,  I  felt 
that  I  would  have  been  converted  into  a 
mourner  at  his  obsequies.  As  for  other  game, 
any  bird  smaller  than  a  quail  I  was  too  large 
to  eat ;  and  any  bird  larger  than  a  quail  I  was 
too  small  to  buy.  At  my  present  rate  of  gun 
ning  I  had  made  a  calculation  that  I  might,  as 


I2O  The  Heroine  in  Bronze 

a  literary  marksman,  begin  to  bring  down  grouse 
at  forty-five  and  possibly  report  turkey  at  sixty 
years  of  age. 

For  after-dinner  hours  I  had  two  German 
drinking-cups,  each  of  which  represented  a  gold 
stag  in  the  act  of  executing  a  high  jump  under 
the  boughs  of  a  golden  pine  tree  in  a  golden 
German  forest.  It  was  a  very  short  jump,  but 
it  was  all  gold  while  it  lasted. 

For  midnight  my  collection  embraced  some 
dishes  and  mugs,  very  jolly,  very  cheap,  for 
a  rarebit  with  friends.  There  was  no  beauty 
here,  but  something  better  than  beauty  —  ugli 
ness  ;  to  remind  all  guests  that  beauty  in  glass 
and  china,  as  beauty  in  life,  can  only  go  so  far : 
that  it  never  reaches  any  final  goal.  Always 
there  is  a  station  on  every  road  where  beauty 
comes  to  the  end  of  its  journey:  beyond  it 
begins  a  better  world,  where  good-looking  and 
bad-looking  are  of  no  consequence  in  the  pres 
ence  of  the  great  ultimate  realities  —  kindness, 
loyalty,  good  humor,  good  sense,  and  good 
principles. 

One  last  piece  —  prized  next  to  the  silver 


The  Waiting  121 

tankard  heirloom.  It,  too,  was  a  plate  —  and 
here  beauty  came  back  again.  A  scene  was 
painted  in  the  bottom  of  the  plate,  a  summer  day 
with  a  soft  light  resting  on  high  grassy  mead 
ows.  Beyond  the  meadows  ravines  sank  darkly 
into  abysses.  Beyond  the  ravines  blue,  misty 
mountains  soared  upward  to  snow-peaks  lost 
in  the  clouds.  In  the  foreground  of  the  scene 
a  brook ;  and  sitting  on  the  grass  with  her  eyes 
on  the  brook  a  maid :  sweet  breathed,  I  know, 
sweet  faced,  sweet  hearted.  She  was  bare 
headed,  bare-necked,  and  her  heavy  braids  fell 
down  her  back.  On  her  bare  feet,  which  were 
stretched  out  straight  before  her  on  the  grass, 
were  peasant  shoes ;  her  hands  dropped  for 
gotten  in  her  lap;  her  bodice  was  blue  like  a 
blue  morning-glory  and  her  skirt  of  soft  rose- 
color  like  her  cheeks.  She  sat  there,  tender  and 
alone  in  her  high  Alpine  valley.  Was  she  wait 
ing  for  her  lover  —  waiting  to  answer  him  that 
day  ?  Or  had  he  just  left  her,  had  she  already 
answered?  And  as  she  now  watched  the  swift 
stream  rushing  down  toward  her  from  the 
glaciers  above,  was  she  thinking  that  her  girl- 


122  The  Heroine  in  Bronze 

hood  would  go  by  yet  more  swift  ?     That  plate 
I  never  put  to  base  uses ;  it  was  more  than  china. 

When  I  had  set  my  table,  I  took  up  the  paper 
and  began  to  look  for  reviews  of  books  and  notes 
about  authors.  Through  those  dry  pastures  I 
browsed  with  a  hunger  that  was  beyond  all  pang 
of  flesh  —  the  fierce  hunger  for  fame.  Then 
came  an  interruption.  It  was  occasioned  by  the 
back-elevator  boy  with  my  usual  evening  loaf : 
the  long  brown  loaf  of  bread  in  the  short  brown 
paper  bag.  He  always  held  the  loaf  by  the 
bread-end  and  handed  me  the  bag-end.  That 
was  the  end  I  ate,  the  pure-food  end ;  and  often 
I  wished  that  he  might  have  had  less  politeness, 
that  I  might  have  had  more  loaf. 

A  few  minutes  later  I  heard  sounds  approach 
ing  from  the  cooking  pit.  They  suggested  that  a 
rampant  animal  was  steadily  on  his  way  to  me, 
and  that  steel  and  concrete  could  not  check  the 
fury  of  his  advance.  The  noises  grew  louder 
until  they  reached  the  window  of  my  kitchenette ; 
there  was  a  violent  struggle  to  enter,  and  then  a 
cessation  of  effort :  the  danger  had  arrived,  but 


The  Waiting  123 

could  not  get  in :  may  it  be  so  with  all  my 
dangers  ! 

It  was  the  dumb-waiter  with  my  dinner.  And 
hail  here  to  the  memory  of  that  dumb-waiter, 
the  only  perfect  one !  He  came  when  he  was 
summoned ;  he  went  when  he  was  dismissed ; 
he  did  not  listen  while  he  waited;  he  had  no 
grasping  but  ungrateful  palm;  he  spoke  no 
language  impolite ;  he  belonged  to  no  union ; 
he  could  not  strike ;  and  he  was  a  good  smoker. 
Hail  to  him  ! 

Dumb  as  he  was  he  contrived  to  bring  me  a 
dinner  that  surpassed  him  in  dumbness.  The 
individual  dish-covers,  as  I  lifted  them  off,  re 
vealed  substances  which  wore  no  dietary  ex 
pression.  And  they  arrived  at  the  appropriate 
hour,  inasmuch  as  twilight  is  held  to  be  the 
mildest  hour  of  the  day.  My  meal  shared  the 
placidity  of  the  dusk :  it  was  the  hushed  vespers 
of  the  appetite. 

Ravenous  as  always,  I  ate  and  craved  more. 
Afterwards,  placing  the  empty  dishes  in  the 
dumb  waiter,  I  jerked  the  rope  for  it  to  descend ; 
and  then  in  glorious  freedom  of  mind  and  body 


124  The  Heroine  in  Bronze 

I  lighted  my  pipe  and  drew  my  easiest  chair  to 
the  windows. 

The  true  luxury,  richness,  splendor  of  my 
apartment,  far  beyond  my  family  plate,  con 
sisted  in  views  from  windows.  One,  quite 
small,  opened  on  a  street  and  disclosed  a  church 
opposite.  The  spire  was  on  a  level  with  my 
eyes.  There  was  a  little  tower  where  the  church 
bell  hung  and  where  a  small  ex-congregation  of 
pigeons  met,  my  prayerless,  sermonless  pigeons. 
How  joyously  they  scattered  when  the  bell 
pealed  for  prayers  !  And  how  they  disappeared 
entirely  at  the  call  to  the  sermon  ! 

But  my  best  windows  opened  to  southwest. 
There  the  fresh  breezes  of  summer  entered. 
From  there  I  could  look  across  the  city  into  the 
twilight  sky  and  greet  the  Evening  Star  and 
watch  the  new  moon  come  out  and  go  down 
behind  the  city's  jagged  sky-line.  That  sky 
line  sometimes  made  me  think  of  it  as  the  Wolf  of 
the  World  lying  on  his  back  with  his  mouth  open 
and  his  fangs  showing.  A  long  path  of  silvery 
haze  far  below  showed  me  where  Broadway  ran 
through  its  demoniac  fires;  and  farther  south- 


The  Waiting  125 

ward  —  high  up  in  the  air  as  though  it  belonged 
neither  to  earth  nor  heaven  —  was  the  great 
clock  towards  which  millions  turned  their  eyes : 
countenance  of  their  pleasures,  dial  of  their 
sorrows,  slipping  chain  of  their  mortality. 

Many  a  time,  sitting  at  one  of  these  windows 
with  the  evening  light  in  the  sky,  I  would 
remember  how  in  years  gone,  when  I  was  a 
boy,  it  fell  on  the  farm ;  this  same  evening  light 
fell  on  the  darkening  fields  and  woods;  on 
members  of  the  family  as  they  came  in  one  by 
one  for  the  night.  Such  memories  !  That  was 
always  the  hour  when  I  grew  lonesomest;  and 
then  it  was  that  I  thought  most  solemnly  of 
how  strangely  it  had  come  about  that  I,  instead 
of  being  on  the  farm  still  to  move  round  and 
round  its  small  boundaries  all  my  years  and 
measure  my  length  at  last  there  with  my  fore 
fathers  of  the  soil  —  how  strangely  it  had  come 
about  that  I  should  be  at  a  window  in  New  York, 
remembering  it  as  a  place  not  meant  for  me  :  my 
purpose  being  set  to  climb  those  human  heights 
which  long  had  beckoned  to  me  in  the  distance, 
and  ever  as  I  travelled  toward  them  beckoned  as 
far  off  still. 


126  The  Heroine  in  Bronze 

I  smoked  that  night  until  it  grew  night,  and 
around  the  horizon  a  million  lights  of  the  city 
were  set  to  twinkle.  I  had  no  thought  of  how 
the  light  of  the  evening  sky  fell  on  the  green 
land,  but  on  the  gray  stretches  of  the  sea  and  on 
an  ocean  steamer  rushing  away  through  the 
waves.  In  the  wake  of  that  steamer  my  spirit 
followed  like  a  gull,  asking  for  but  a  crumb  on 
the  waters.  I  pictured  with  agony  details :  the 
gorgeous  dining-saloon ;  the  gay  diners;  their 
tables  loaded  with  flowers  of  last  remembrance 
from  the  land :  the  dimly  lighted  decks ;  the 
long  row  of  steamer  chairs,  each  with  its  shawl, 
and  on  the  shawl  some  book  —  perhaps  the 
work  of  some  happy,  prosperous  author  —  him 
self  on  board. 

This,  then,  was  the  downfall  of  the  day,  its 
overthrow,  its  demolition.  At  sunrise  I  had 
said  that  a  man's  fairer  deed  finds  a  fairer  day. 
It  had  not  turned  out  thus  for  me :  the  fair 
day  had  been  most  unfair.  Instead  of  bringing 
my  betrothal  it  had  brought  alienation ;  for 
closer  companionship  with  her  it  had  given 
absence;  her  faith  in  me  had  been  turned  into 


The  Waiting  127 

doubt ;  I  had  offered  her  my  best  and  she  had 
made  it  the  worst ;  all  that  at  daybreak  I  had, 
by  night  I  had  lost. 

One  thing  only  I  had  gained :  in  the  wrench 
of  parting,  in  the  grief  of  casting  me  off,  some 
kind  of  confession  had  been  torn  from  her : 
she  loved  me  —  of  that  I  felt  sure  now  —  she 
had  loved  me ! 

I  got  up  at  last  and  went  to  my  writing-desk 
and  kindled  my  light,  and  for  a  while  sat  looking 
at  the  top  of  that  poor  bare  table.  A  soldier 
standing  at  its  edge  might  thus  have  looked 
over  his  battle-field  of  the  morrow:  on  it  he 
must  either  go  down  to  defeat  or  the  forces 
opposed  to  him  go  down  to  theirs.  On  that 
desk,  now  more  than  ever,  it  was  for  me  to  win 
her. 

I  surveyed  it  as  never  before  —  it  and  the 
little  things  that  hung  about  it  as  its  whole 
equipment :  these  were  five.  Tacked  to  the 
wall  with  an  iron  tack  was  a  five-cent  calendar : 
that  stood  for  Time.  Hanging  beside  this  on 
an  iron  nail  was  a  small  stone  face  of  a  heathen 


128  The  Heroine  in  Bronze 

god  with  bandaged  eyes:  he  stood  for  the 
sightless,  pitiless  Power  of  the  Eternal  in  the 
universe.  Next  hung  a  photograph  of  Balzac 

—  a  monstrous  extravagance  to  my  pocket  — 
Louis  Boulanger's  portrait  of  him  in  his  snow- 
white  working  robe :    that  stood  for  Toil  and 
Poverty  and  Genius.     Near  by  lay  a  penholder 
which  some  friends  had  brought  me  one  summer 
from  England,  made  of  sweet  stout  cedar :  that 
stood  for  the  land  of  English  classics,  the  home 
of  the  Anglo-Saxon  masterpiece. 

These,  then,  were  my  standards,  my  colors, 
set  up  about  my  battle-fields;  these  the  aged 
Sentinels  holding  around  me  their  grim  Bivouac : 
Time  —  Destiny  — Toil  and  Poverty  —  Genius 

—  Art! 

There  was  one  object  more:  out  in  front  of  the 
others,  standing  solitary  on  a  projection  of  my 
desk,  as  on  some  little  promontory  beside  that 
unknown  troubled  sea,  was  a  small  bronze 
figure  of  a  girl.  Her  figure  was  bent  slightly 
forward  so  that  her  eyes,  being  downcast,  rested 
on  my  writing-paper.  High  above  her  head  in 
one  hand  she  held  a  lamp.  The  rays  of  it  also 


The  Waiting  129 

shone  full  on  the  spot  where  her  eyes  rested  — 
on  my  paper. 

She  stood  for  Love  bearing  a  Light. 

This  statuette  had  come  into  my  possession 
that  spring.  I  eked  out  the  means  to  livelihood 
by  taking  private  pupils;  and  one  day  I  had 
gone  to  two  of  them  for  lessons.  They  were 
brothers  from  my  country  who  had  come  to  New 
York  to  make  their  way;  and  they  had  night 
positions  at  some  kind  of  work  and  slept  the 
first  half  of  the  day  and  studied  the  other  half. 
They  had  regarded  me  with  special  favor  as 
their  tutor,  inasmuch  as  they  were  not  always 
supplied  with  funds ;  and  I,  not  being  supplied 
either,  but  being  from  their  part  of  the  world, 
could  patriotically  afford  to  wait.  Patriotically 
or  not,  I  often  waited. 

That  day  they  were  prepared  to  give  me  my 
due,  and  rich  with  earnings  in  my  pocket  I  set 
out  on  my  return.  My  course  lay  through  a 
residential  quarter  of  the  city  where,  in  the 
northward  sweep  of  trade,  homes  are  giving 
way  to  shops ;  and  near  the  middle  of  the  block 
I  saw,  waving  far  out  across  the  sidewalk,  the 


130  The  Heroine  in  Bronze 

New  York  tricolor  of  financial  ruin  —  the  red 
and  white  and  black  flag  of  the  auctioneer. 
It  announced  a  furniture  sale  in  a  dismantled 
house  where  perhaps  a  family  had  managed  to 
hold  together  through  one  last  winter  —  then 
could  hold  together  no  longer. 

Now,  ordinarily  the  only  justification  of  my 
presence  in  an  auction  room  would  have  been 
to  put  myself  up  to  the  highest  bidder  in  order 
that  I  might  reap  the  benefit  at  once  of  what 
soever  small  sum  I  might  bring.  But  that  day, 
feeling  the  power  and  spirit  of  adventure  which 
comes  from  earnings  in  one's  pocket,  I  followed 
the  flag  and  entered. 

At  one  end  of  the  suite"  of  parlors,  on  a  plat 
form,  sat  the  auctioneer,  and  below  him  the  apa 
thetic  and  discouraging  bidders.  As  I  entered  he 
interrupted  himself  to  announce  that  if  any  one 
wished  to  bid  on  any  object,  it  would  be  put  up 
at  once.  For  a  while  I  loitered  to  study  the 
human  nature  of  the  scene  and  then  turned  to 
walk  out;  but  at  the  front  door  the  attendant, 
looking  a  little  mortified,  offered  a  final  induce 
ment  :  there  were  things  upstairs.  Loath  to 


The  Waiting  131 

hurt  any  man's  feelings  by  refusing  even  to  look 
at  furniture  which  I  could  not  buy,  upstairs 
I  went;  and  there  in  a  rear  room,  under  thick 
dust,  abandoned  to  its  fate,  I  found  this  statuette 
of  the  finest  French  bronze. 

Her  lamp  was  empty  that  day,  but  with  up- 
stretched  arm  she  still  held  it  high.  Her  eyes 
looked  out  upon  defeat,  but  their  expression 
remained  pledged  to  victory.  Old  ties  had  come 
to  an  end  there,  humanity  itself  had  failed; 
but  she  lived  on  —  fresh,  charming,  irresistible, 
victorious,  supreme  —  an  immortal  ideal  amid 
a  mortal  ruin. 

She  still  waited  there  to  serve,  but  with  none 
to  require  her  service.  The  sight  touched  me. 
I  thought  of  her  as  a  young  traveller  of  old, 
wandering  into  some  slave  market,  might  have 
found  a  beautiful  young  slave  whom  misfortune 
had  bereft  of  her  master  and  whom  the  hardened 
buyers,  sated  with  slaves  of  their  own,  did  not 
care  to  purchase. 

The  attendant,  quick  to  read  my  face,  asked 
whether  I  should  like  to  have  the  piece  put  up 
at  once.  I  said  I  should,  and  downstairs  we 


132  The  Heroine  in  Bronze 

went  with  it.  There  it  made  no  appeal  to  any 
one  else  and  passed  into  my  possession;  and 
that  night  it  found  its  place  on  my  desk  as  my 
lamp.  At  once  I,  amid  the  battling  realities  of 
daily  life,  forgot  it,  forgot  even  the.  mood  which 
had  led  me  to  buy. 

But  we  may  dwell  amid  our  lifeless  surround 
ings  indefinitely,  without  realizing  all  that  they 
can  mean  to  us :  this  depends  upon  changes  in 
ourselves.  Long  we  dwell  even  with  the  living, 
never  knowing  what  they  mean  :  only  after  we 
need  them  will  we  understand  them :  when  we 
need  to  the  uttermost,  they  will  be  understood 
to  their  uttermost.  This  experience  now  befell 
me.  I  sat  there  that  evening,  as  I  have  said, 
taking  account  as  never  before  of  my  desk  and 
the  poor  appointments :  on  the  eve  of  a  greater 
conflict  than  I  had  ever  waged.  And  that  day 
there  had  come  into  my  life  a  new  loneliness: 
all  that  living  woman  could  mean  to  me  had 
gone  away  —  in  anger  and  distrust  of  me. 
Now  as  I  struck  a  match  and  kindled  the  lamp, 
a  new  significance  flashed  upon  me  from  that 
guardian  torch. 


The  Waiting  133 

I  was  like  the  prisoner  who,  on  the  first  day 
of  walking  through  the  few  rays  of  sunlight  his 
prison  afforded,  saw  springing  up  through  the 
bricks  a  flower :  which  thenceforth  took  root 
in  his  soul,  nourishing  the  soul  it  was  rooted  in. 
I  was  like  another  prisoner  who,  as  his  hand  one 
day  groped  along  the  dark  wall  of  his  cell  found 
there  —  what  he  had  never  found  before  — 
a  crucifix  left  by  some  one  who  had  poured  faith 
out  over  it  until  prayer  ceased. 

I  now  sat  with  my  heart  leaping  up  into  that 
flame  above  my  desk.  It  was  as  if  on  the  day 
she  went  away  changed  toward  me  there  had 
come  in  her  place  an  image  that  stood  for  what 
she  had  been  of  old  and  that  was  change 
less.  Here  before  my  eyes  was  her  grace, 
her  slenderness ;  the  bared  neck,  the  half- 
bared  arm ;  the  masses  of  hair  gleaming  with 
the  dawn;  the  gayety,  the  sweetness,  the 
purity. 

I  sat  there  looking  at  it.  It  brought  into  my 
love  of  her  a  new  element  —  that  emotion  which 
haunts  those  lonely  shores  where  worship  is 
born  and  must  ever  dwell.  With  this  image  of 


134  The  Heroine  in  Bronze 

her  before  me  I  almost  came  face  to  face  with 
the  tenderness,  the  splendor,  of  Religion. 

She  stood  there  waiting  —  alive,  conscious, 
impatient.  Her  eyes  rested  on  my  writing 
paper ;  there  she  cast  the  rays  of  her  light  — 
waiting. 

I  stretched  out  my  hand  for  the  pen  and  began 
the  story. 


CHAPTER  II 


very  opening  of  the  story  swept 
away  all  ground  for  the  distress 
which  she  had  caused  herself  and 
had  caused  me  through  belief  that 
I  had  meant  to  make  use  of  her 
life  as  material  for  my  fiction ;  that  I,  as  the 
gay  young  Judas  of  American  Novelists,  meant 
to  sell  her  to  the  world  in  the  market-place  of 
literature  for  so  many  pieces  of  silver  —  per 
haps  for  very  few. 

The  scene  of  the  story  did  not  lie  in  the 
North,  but  in  the  South,  in  my  own  country 
where  she  had  never  been.  The  period  of  the 
story  did  not  fall  within  her  own  lifetime,  but 
lay  three  generations  back,  before  even  her 
father  and  mother  had  been  born.  She  might 
have  as  reasonably  been  offended  with  Chateau 
briand  for  writing  Paul  and  Virginia;  as  well 
have  taken  alarm  lest  living  Americans  should 
135 


136  The  Heroine  in  Bronze 

mistakenly  identify  her  as  Scheherazade  in  The 
Arabian  Nights. 

Certainly  she  could  not  have  felt  aggrieved 
that  I  should  have  had  my  own  grandmother. 
I  had  to  have  a  grandmother.  Nor  could  she 
have  been  so  ungenerous  as  to  object  to  my 
grandmother's  having  gone  to  my  grandmother's 
own  school.  Yet  it  was  solely  to  my  grand 
mother  and  to  her  having  been  educated  —  of 
course,  very  badly  educated  —  that  I  owed  the 
origin  of  my  romance.  In  this  wise :  — 

Among  my  earliest  recollections  was  that  of 
travelling  from  country  to  town  and  home  again 
in  the  family  carriage  with  a  negro  driver  and 
a  negro  footman  out  on  the  box-seat.  I  envied 
the  footman  and  ached  to  push  him  off  his 
cushions:  I  desired  to  sit  outside  beside  the 
driver,  between  the  lamps,  and  occasionally  to 
handle  the  reins ;  and  especially  in  wet  weather 
to  jump  over  the  wheel  into  the  mud  to  open 
gates.  It  had  not  escaped  me  that  the  jumping 
into  the  mud  in  his  best  clothes  always  amused 
the  footman,  and  I  did  not  see  why  jumping 
into  the  mud  with  my  best  clothes  would  not 


The  Waiting  137 

amuse  me;  and  I  wished  to  be  amused.  This 
kind  of  energy  being  denied  me,  I  was  forced  to 
ride  inside,  where  my  greatest  activity  consisted 
of  trying  to  grind  the  wool  off  a  sheepskin  rug 
in  the  bottom  of  the  carriage  as  I  stood  at  the 
window,  questioning  my  grandmother  about 
every  object  on  the  roadside  that  could  possibly 
be  investigated.  The  more  numerous  the  ques 
tions,  the  better  pleased  my  grandmother,  whose 
chief  interest  in  life  lay  in  answering  all  ques 
tions  propounded  by  everybody.  At  home  in 
the  family  circle  if  every  one  grew  worn  out  and 
refused  to  entertain  my  grandmother  with  more 
questions,  she  would  herself  begin  to  propound 
them  to  the  company  and  continue  her  enter 
tainment.  My  mother  had  too  many  young 
children  to  heed  their  questions.  They  might 
clamor  at  her  apron  strings  for  hours  without 
disturbing  her  tranquil  thoughts;  nevertheless 
if  any  one  of  us  asked  a  question  worth  answer 
ing,  no  doubt  she  never  failed  to  answer  it  — 
and  wisely. 

One  day,  I  being  in  the  carriage  with  my  grand 
mother,  as  we  drew  near  the  little  rustic  town 


138  The  Heroine  in  Bronze 

which  was  our  great  city,  and  the  fine  old  wood 
lands  through  which  the  turnpike  ran  became 
lawns  and  residences,  I  observed  at  the  very 
edge  of  town  that  my  grandmother  leaned  for 
ward  in  her  seat  and  looked  out  of  the  window 
on  her  side  of  the  carriage :  she  always  sat  on 
that  side.  I  suddenly  remembered  that  I  had 
repeatedly  seen  her  do  this  before.  She  bent 
over  that  day  and  looked  out  at  a  large  build 
ing,  the  largest  I  had  ever  beheld.  As  I  now 
think  of  it,  it  stood  there,  a  kind  of  Gothic 
castle  with  battlemented  turrets  and  diamond- 
paned  windows;  with  ivy  clambering  over  its 
walls,  brown  as  with  the  mould  of  centuries; 
with  honeysuckle  massed  about  the  lower 
windows.  The  whole  place  seemed  to  harbor 
the  scholarly  seclusion  of  a  dim  mediaeval 
cloister.  Venerable  forest  trees  were  grouped 
about  it ;  silken  bluegrass  flowed  deep  over  the 
lawn ;  it  was  a  paradise  for  birds.  Noble  it 
stood  there  that  day,  unlike  the  ignoble  things 
springing  up  around  it ;  for  the  lawn  was  being 
cut  into  building  lots,  and  ugly  modern  houses 
began  to  vulgarize  it  on  the  right  and  the  left. 


The  Waiting  139 

Perhaps  that  was  the  reason  why,  as  my  grand 
mother  looked  at  it  that  day,  a  mist  of  tears 
gathered  in  her  merry  old  eyes.  I  followed  her 
glance  and  noted  emotion  as  a  child  quickly 
does :  — 

"What  is  that  place,  grandmother?" 

"It  is  a  boarding-house.  That  is  where  I 
went  to  school." 

"O  grandmother!"  I  cried,  looking  up  at 
her  incredulously,  "did  you  go  to  school  in  a 
boarding-house  ?  " 

"When  I  went  to  school  there,  it  was  not  a 
boarding-house.  It  was  a  boarding-school,  a 
female  seminary.  That  is  where  I  graduated." 

"O  grandmother,"  I  cried,  "did  you  ever 
graduate?" 

Graduation,  I  thought,  was  tribulation  re 
served  for  hardened,  mischievous  boys.  Now 
I  saw  the  world  was  going  to  turn  out  to  be  a 
hard  place  for  everybody,  both  girls  and  boys 
being  able  to  scrape  through  by  the  hardest. 

"Of  course  I  graduated,"  replied  my  grand 
mother,  a  little  indignant  even  at  me. 

"What  did  you  graduate  in?" 


140  The  Heroine  in  Bronze 

I  had  already  made  up  my  mind  that  I  would 
graduate  in  as  little  as  possible;  I  might  tread 
in  my  grandmother's  steps.  In  the  family  she 
was  reputed  to  be  very  saving,  and  she  might 
have  been  economic  about  graduating. 

"I  graduated  in  arithmetic  —  just  barely. 
And  there  was  a  little  algebra,  but  that  was 
dreadful  —  they  hushed  it  up  about  my  algebra. 
And  in  natural  philosophy  —  very  easily :  I 
flew  through  natural  philosophy.  And  in  rheto 
ric,  of  course.  And  in  penmanship.  And  in 
French.  And  in  botany.  And  in  painting. 
And  in  music.  And  in  deportment.  And  in 
my  petticoats  !"  added  my  grandmother,  laugh 
ing.  "I  was  a  highly  accomplished  young 
lady!" 

"O  grandmother!"  I  cried,  "did  you  gradu 
ate  in  petticoats  ?  How  funny  !" 

"I  graduated  in  as  many  as  I  could  put  on, 
and  in  those  days  we  could  put  on  a  good  many 
when  we  did  our  best,"  said  my  grandmother, 
brushing  tears  of  merriment  out  of  her  eyes.  "I 
had  on  sky-blue  kid  boots  laced  up  my  ankles 
and  a  dotted  Swiss  muslin  flounced  to  the  waist ; 


The  Waiting  141 

and  a  lace  bertha  and  a  hoop-skirt  and  a  broad 
blue  sash  fastened  with  a  rosette  on  my  left 
shoulder  and  sweeping  across  my  breast — " 

"Didn't  it  sweep  across  your  back?" 

My  grandmother  laid  her  hand  on  mine  to 
suggest  no  more  interruptions :  — 

"My  hair  was  curled  in  ringlets  with  a  heated 
poker ;  I  had  artificial  pink  roses  sparkling  with 
glass  dewdrops  pinned  behind  my  ear  on  one 
side  and  three  bands  of  pink  satin  ribbon  run 
ning  through  my  hair  in  front.  I  carried  a 
hemstitched  handkerchief  and  a  white  ivory 
fan." 

"O  grandmother  !    How  did  you  look  ?" 

"I  looked  perfectly  beautiful ! "  said  my  grand 
mother,  triumphantly.  "Don't  you  still  see  that 
I  looked  perfectly  beautiful  ?" 

I  studied  my  grandmother's  face  carefully. 

"Grandmother,"  I  said,  "I  do  not.  Far 
from  it!" 

"Well,  perhaps  there  have  been  some  changes," 
said  my  grandmother,  laughing  indulgently. 
"And  perhaps  your  taste  is  not  fully  formed 
either  —  like  the  rest  of  you."  My  grandmother 


142  The  Heroine  in  Bronze 

had  a  power  of  vigorous  speech  which  she  handled 
on  people  with  wonderful  enjoyment  —  to  her 
self. 

"What  did  you  do  when  you  graduated?" 

"I  stood  by  the  piano  on  the  chapel  stage  and 
sang  a  beautiful  song  called  —  I'd  offer  Thee 
This  Hand  of  Mine.  Then  I  read  my  composi 
tion.  Then  I  received  my  diploma.  And  in 
the  midst  of  all  these  honors  I  never  failed  to 
use  my  handkerchief  and  my  fan,"  said  my 
grandmother,  tickled  at  her  own  candor. 

"What  was  the  subject  of  your  composi 
tion?" 

I  fear  there  was  impoliteness  in  my  voice. 
My  own  compositions  at  school  were  a  great 
source  of  pride  to  me :  I  thought  them  fine. 
And  I  was  not  edified  now  that  my  grandmother 
had  exercised  the  family  gift  long  before  I  ap 
peared  upon  the  scene  to  exercise  it  myself. 

My  grandmother  opened  her  beaded  reticule 
and  nibbled  a  nutmeg.  To  this  day  I  do  not 
know  which  brings  up  her  presence  more  vividly : 
her  own  daguerreotype  or  the  scent  of  ground 
nutmeg.  She  was  immensely  entertained :  — 


The  Waiting  143 

"My  composition  was  on  the  Pleasures  of 
Old  Age." 

I  clapped  my  hands :  — 

"Then  you  were  old,  weren't  you?  I  knew 
you  must  have  been  old  !" 

"When  I  had  finished  reading  my  composi 
tion,  a  shower  of  bouquets  descended  on  me. 
One  of  them  was  thrown  by  a  young  farmer. 
He  had  thick  chestnut  curls  and  a  beautiful 
moustache,  and  he  was  scented  with  bergamot : 
I  know!  After  we  had  gone  out  on  the  lawn 
for  refreshments  under  the  trees,  he  was  intro 
duced  to  me,  and  we  fell  in  love  with  each  other 
as  soon  as  we  touched  each  other's  hands. 
My,  but  he  was  handsome  and  eager  and  ardent! 
And  how  I  loved  him  !  How  I  loved  him  !" 

"What  became  of  him,  I  wonder  !" 

"He  is  your  grandfather,"  replied  my  grand 
mother,  catching  me  to  her  heart. 

"0  grandmother,"  I  cried,  "grandfather  threw 
a  bouquet  at  you?  What  a  funny  thing  for 
him  to  do  !  I  knew  he  threw  other  things  at 
people,  but  I  never  knew  he  threw  flowers.  I 
thought  he  didn't  like  flowers." 


144  The  Heroine  in  Bronze 

"His  bouquet  had  a  note  tucked  in  it." 

"How  funny  of  grandfather  !" 

"It  was  not  in  the  least  funny,  you  will  un 
derstand  some  day." 

"I  want  to  understand  now." 

My  grandmother's  eyes  twinkled : 

"You  can't  understand  now." 

I  thought  I'd  teach  my  grandmother  a  lesson  : 

"And  so  grandfather  was  the  only  sweetheart 
you  ever  had,"  I  remarked  sagely. 

In  reward  for  which  sagacity,  my  grandmother 
promptly  boxed  my  ears.  Though  not  conceal 
ing  her  amusement :  — 

"You  are  too  young  to  talk  about  such 
things,"  she  commanded.  Then  she  relapsed 
into  silence  and  then  broke  it :  — 

"There  was  a  sweetheart  before  your  grand 
father  —  the  music  teacher  of  the  seminary. 
He  was  the  only  man  in  the  seminary,  and  I 
had  to  be  in  love  with  somebody !  When  he 
gave  me  singing  lessons,  he  chewed  mace,  and 
I  suppose  that  is  why  I  eat  nutmegs." 

This  talk  set  up  a  rapid  fermentation  in  my 
brain.  After  some  moment,  during  which  a 


The  Waiting  145 

yeast-like  growth  overflowed  the  juvenile  basin, 
I  offered  my  grandmother  the  result :  — 

"Grandmother,  when  I  am  grown,  I  am  going 
to  put  you,  and  grandfather,  and  the  seminary, 
and  the  music  teacher  in  a  book." 

"Your  grandfather's  name  and  my  name 
are  already  written  in  one  Book,  I  hope,"  replied 
my  grandmother,  softly  and  gravely.  "I  hope 
they  are  written  in  the  Good  Book :  that  is 
enough  !  Leave  us  out  of  yours  !  One  Book 
—  and  the  Day  of  Judgment  —  will  do  for  us  ! " 
she  laughed  a  little  prudently. 

"Mine  wouldn't  be  a  bad  book." 

"Still  I  think  there  would  be  a  difference; 
some  slight  difference." 

"But  I  can't  write  a  book  if  I  don't  have 
people  to  put  in  it." 

"Well,"  said  my  grandmother,  thumping 
my  forehead  affectionately,  as  though  to  impress 
upon  it  a  reminder  for  all  time,  "when  you 
think  up  your  book,  think  up  your  people." 

That  was  the  origin  of  my  story.  The  idea 
of  it  had  been  dropped  as  a  seed  into  the  mind 


146  TJte  Heroine  in  Bronze 

of  a  child.  It  had  sprouted  and  afterwards 
been  nourished  by  other  things.  Through 
years  the  stem  of  it  had  been  growing  toward 
the  surface  of  consciousness ;  and  that  morning 
when  I  awoke,  there,  at  last,  the  flower  of  it 
lay  open  and  perfect  like  a  lotus  at  sunrise  on 
the  bosom  of  its  lake. 

A  story  not  of  my  grandmother,  but  of  my 
grandmother's  time;  not  of  my  grandfather, 
but  of  my  grandfather's  time.  With  him  would 
go  the  picture  of  farm  life  in  his  beautiful  coun 
try,  the  like  of  which  was  not  to  be  seen  else 
where  in  the  world.  With  her  would  go  the 
picture  of  girl-life  in  one  of  those  romantic  Board 
ing  Schools  of  the  South  —  those  Female  Semi 
naries  —  those  Daughters'  Colleges  —  through 
the  windows  and  portals  of  which  streamed  the 
best  light  one  half  of  the  nation  then  had  for 
its  picked  girlhood.  No  such  bewildering  efful 
gence  as  radiates  from  the  great  colleges  of  the 
republic  in  our  time;  yet  a  true  light  leading 
onward,  guiding  upward  —  the  best  there  was : 
and  not  without  its  sublime  reward. 

For  the  sentimental  schoolgirls  of  those  roman- 


The  Waiting  147 

tic  seminaries  became  the  mighty  women  of  the 
civil  war,  fierce  Tyrtaean  mothers  of  the  South 
—  those  fighting,  praying,  starving,  broken, 
dying,  never  conquered,  infuriated  women, 
whose  husbands,  sons,  lovers,  brothers,  dyed 
with  their  blood  the  battle  trenches  of  their 
land  and  the  battle  trenches  of  the  sea.  Tender 
romantic  schoolgirls  at  first,  poorly  educated, 
scarcely  educated  at  all ;  then  Spartan  women ; 
now  most  revered,  most  majestical  figures  on 
the  landscape  of  the  nation's  history.  Time 
that  breaks  all  moulds  has  broken  theirs  and 
will  never  use  it  again  —  one  of  the  world's 
heroic  moulds  of  womanhood. 

That  was  my  story  —  the  time,  the  setting. 
And  toward  midnight  there  the  opening  of  it  lay 
before  me  on  my  desk.  And  through  it  I  came 
back  at  midnight  to  where  I  had  been  at  day 
break  —  with  the  light  of  something  beauti 
ful  blazing  in  me  once  more.  Here  was  some 
thing  that  could  not  misunderstand,  and  could 
not  wrong  me ;  upon  it  I  could  pour  out  my  best 
and  be  unfettered  and  free.  Love  may  wrong, 
Art  never.  The  arrow  of  its  ideal,  if  shot  into 


148  The  Heroine  in  Bronze 

the  air,  will  never  afterwards  be  found  sticking 
in  one's  heart. 

So  in  peace,  but  a  sad  peace,  I  slept  that  night 
— as  regarded  my  work,  but  heart-broken  for  her. 
Our  quarrel  had  been  so  needless :  a  sentence 
would  have  set  it  right.  But  we,  being  sensible, 
were  foolish.  Alas  for  the  hardships  of  a  world 
in  which  the  fools  can  never  be  sensible  and  the 
sensible  can  ever  be  fools. 

Summer  now  set  in.  There  was  a  sign  of  this 
the  morning  after  her  departure :  my  electric 
bell  was  touched  and  it  responded.  If  you  can 
imagine  a  steel  grouse  very  much  frightened 
and  trying  to  get  away  as  soon  as  possible  on  a 
pair  of  steel  wings,  you  will  form  some  idea  of 
the  trepidation  of  sound  that  now  quivered  on 
the  silence. 

It  was  the  houseman :  would  I  have  my  awn 
ings  put  up  ?  My  draperies  taken  down  ?  My 
rugs  dusted  and  laid  away  from  moths?  I 
welcomed  the  awnings ;  they  would  shade  my 
southern  windows  against  the  tropical  glare  of 
noons  soon  to  come.  But  that  courtesy  as  to  my 


The  Waiting  149 

draperies  and  rugs  !  A  creature  that  could  have 
bitten  into  any  rug  of  mine  must  have  been 
equipped  by  nature  with  a  higher  order  of  jaws 
and  a  lower  order  of  intelligence  than  any 
possessed  by  moths.  A  New  York  moth  would 
not  have  accepted  my  rugs  as  a  free  gift.  All 
the  more  it  became  the  houseman's  duty  to  make 
his  inquiry.  It  was  not  his  prerogative  to  dis 
criminate  among  tenants  as  to  whose  rugs 
were  valuable  and  whose  not.  All  of  us  are 
rubbed  most  sore  where  the  coarsest  things  of  life 
touch  us ;  and  he  understood  human  nature 
too  well  in  his  position  not  to  be  aware  that 
tenants  may  be  rubbed  sore  by  their  own  coarse 
rugs. 

Other  signs  of  summer  followed  rapidly. 
Some  of  my  friends  began  to  go  away  for  their 
vacations  for  months,  as  they  were  graded  in 
prosperity  by  stretch  of  absence.  These  went : 
and  there  were  left  those  other  friends  who 
could  get  away  to  seashore  or  mountains  only  at 
week-ends.  Now  week-ends  are  the  lonesome 
ones  in  a  New  York  summer,  and  thus  these 
other  friends  now  disappeared  when  they  were 


150  The  Heroine  in  Bronze 

most  needed.  No  one  of  them  ever  thought 
of  staying  in  the  city  to  spend  a  week-end  with 
me  who  could  not  leave  at  all.  But  it  was  better 
thus  :  had  any  one  of  them  remained  to  bear  me 
company,  I  should  have  been  too  awed  by  the 
spectacle  of  his  heroism  to  have  sat  at  ease 
in  his  presence.  I  was  glad  they  were  all  nor 
mally  selfish  men,  so  that  my  peace  of  mind 
might  not  be  disturbed  by  them  as  enclosures 
of  too  many  virtues. 

It  being  the  order  of  things  to  go,  one  day  the 
dumb-waiter  took  its  leave.  I  received  word 
from  the  basement  that  for  me  cooking  would 
be  suspended  until  October :  and  that  after 
October  a  restaurant  would  be  opened  —  thus 
ending  my  attempts  to  be  self-sustaining;  but 
in  the  meantime  I  was  thus  turned  out  of  doors 
to  look  for  city  table  d'hotes. 

As  everything  was  taking  its  departure,  the 
back-elevator  boy  joined  in  this  recessive  move 
ment  :  he  himself  did  not  depart,  but  his  draperies 
began  to  leave  him.  As  the  days  grew  warmer 
his  woollens  were  shed  as  a  furred  animal  drops 
its  winter  shag.  He  thus  sartorially  betook 


The  Waiting  151 

himself  back  toward  the  artlessness  of  primitive 
man.  And  when  in  August  he  attained  his 
midsummer  metamorphosis,  he  regularly  ap 
peared  with  the  evening  loaf  as  his  own  blend 
of  the  Baker  and  the  Bone  age. 

One  day  the  final  mournful  seal  of  summer  was 
set  for  me.  Passing  through  the  street  where  she 
lived,  I  saw  the  house  closed,  the  front  door 
barred,  the  shutters  drawn  —  emptiness  and 
silence.  As  I  walked  away,  most  I  thought  of 
her  rose-bush  near  the  marble  seat;  with  dews 
on  it  at  dawn,  with  dews  on  it  again  at  twilight ; 
its  buds  opening  one  by  one  —  and  she  not  there. 

Not  everything  was  going ;  some  things  were 
coming.  July  was  coming,  and  with  the  first 
week  of  July  my  royalties  arrived  —  sixteen 
dollars  and  forty  cents. 

I  took  the  check  down  to  the  greedy  canons 
of  the  gold  miners  of  lower  Manhattan,  to  the 
palace  of  a  trust  company.  The  paying  teller 
stood  at  his  wicket  of  bevelled  glass  and  Cir 
cassian  walnut  —  in  his  market-stall  of  avarice. 
Bank-notes  tied  in  bunches  of  various  sizes 
were  piled  about  him  as  though  they  were  the 


152  The  Heroine  in  Bronze 

season's  radishes  and  asparagus  on  sale;  it 
was  early,  and  there  were  few  buyers  as  yet  that 
day. 

Before  that  man  in  his  wicket  thousands  of 
his  fellow-creatures  filed,  and  he  asked  each  of 
them  but  one  question :  How  little,  how  much  ? 
That  was  his  only  measure  of  mankind  year 
after  year  —  how  little  gold  —  how  much  gold  ? 
He  had  learned  to  know  me  as  the  author  of 
some  unsuccessful  books  through  the  publisher's 
checks,  not  through  the  books ;  and  even  before 
I  had  reached  his  window  that  morning,  he  was 
ready  with  the  question  —  how  little  ?  And  it  is 
possible  that  while  he  was  looking  at  my  check 
and  pushing  out  to  me  what  it  called  for,  he  had 
worked  out  a  problem :  if  the  interest  for  six 
months  was  sixteen  dollars  and  forty  cents  and 
if  the  principal  was  ninety  millions  of  Americans, 
what  was  the  per  cent  levied  by  me  on  my 
countrymen?  How  much  did  my  books  cost 
the  nation  per  suffering  head? 

When  we  parted  at  his  window,  he  and  I 
lost  sight  of  each  other,  but  I  think  we  never 
parted  without  a  final  shot.  As  a  bank  official 


The  Waiting  153 

he  was  forbidden  to  speculate :  still  I  think  he 
speculated  as  to  what  became  of  me  when  I 
disappeared  into  private  life.  Did  I  by  night 
hang  myself  up  by  my  toes  from  the  rafters  of 
some  unoccupied  building  and  sleep  economi 
cally  like  a  bat?  Many  a  time  I  would  have 
been  glad  to  do  so.  In  turn,  I  took  the  liberty 
of  taking  his  measure  when  he  disappeared  out 
oi  his  palace :  to  what  proportions  did  he 
shrink?  Once  I  fancied  I  saw  him  emptying 
oil  on  the  mosquito  trenches  which  spread  their 
lacustrine  scenery  around  his  box  on  the  flats 
of  New  Jersey.  And  once  I  fancied  I  caught 
sight  of  him  on  a  rocky  hillside  of  the  Bronx, 
on  his  knees  in  the  evening  light,  draining  with 
his  moneyed  fingers  the  bankrupt  udders  of  the 
family  goat. 

But  that  day,  as  I  left  the  bank  with  my  pit 
tance,  never  before  had  I  come  so  near  meeting 
that  dread  Shape  which  walks  the  streets  of 
New  York  always  in  search  of  the  young  who 
have  come  in  from  the  country;  for  the  light- 
hearted,  the  too-trustful,  too-hopeful  youths  of 
each  sex :  the  appalling  Shape  of  Failure.  She 


154  The  Heroine  in  Bronze 

wishes  but  to  link  her  arm  within  that  of  a 
youth  —  girl  or  boy  —  and  whisper : — 

"I  am  Failure.  You  are  a  failure.  You  do 
not  belong  in  these  streets ;  they  are  for  success. 
Come  out  of  them  with  me;  drop  out  of  sight 
with  me  down  this  alley." 

Never  had  I  so  nearly  met  her  as  that  day 
with  that  proof  of  my  value.  So  that  I  came 
up  town  to  the  establishment  on  Fifth  Avenue, 
where  my  salesman  of  the  odd  pieces  always 
waited  with  a  smile  for  an  odd  youth;  and  I 
bought  with  the  sixteen  dollars  a  gold  card 
plate,  a  piece  looking  like  solid  gold.  I  said  I 
should  lay  that  plate  away  against  the  time 
when  the  publisher  would  not  mail  me  his  check 
for  my  royalties,  but  would  send  them  to  me  by 
his  office  boy.  My  butler  would  meet  his  office 
boy  at  my  front-door;  and  my  gold  card-plate 
would  receive  his  gold-bearing  document.  In 
the  teeth  of  failure  that  day  I  made  this  offering 
to  Victory. 

This  plate  completed  my  family  collection, 
and  with  it  I  closed  the  china  closet  for  the  rest 
of  the  summer  —  it  being  necessary  that  I  go 


The  Waiting  155 

out  to  dine.  Nothing  is  too  small  to  have 
consequences,  and  even  that  trivial  matter 
brought  its  own.  For  one  evening  it  befell  me 
to  find  my  table  d'hote  in  the  rear  yard  of  a  little 
place  down  in  the  neighborhood  of  the  Wash 
ington  Arch. 

A  great  deal  of  human  life  lies  scattered  around 
the  Arch,  a  wonderful  commingling  of  lives  and 
races;  there  are  French,  there  are  Italians, 
there  are  Swiss,  there  are  many  others.  The 
proprietor  of  this  hostelry  which  I  found  had 
tried  to  turn  his  rear-yard  into  an  al  fresco 
summer-evening  dining  ground.  There  were 
little  tables  ;  with  a  light  on  each  that  glimmered 
out  of  grape-vines.  It  mattered  not  that  the 
grape-vines  were  artificial.  As  you  looked  up 
ward,  you  did  not  see  walls  hung  with  old  Flemish 
tapestries,  but  fire-escapes  hung  with  other 
things  that  would  have  frightened  Flanders. 
And  if  you  looked  on  past  these,  you  could  see 
the  infinitude  of  night  and  the  cool  stars :  and 
after  all,  it  is  not  what  the  eye  must  traverse, 
but  what  it  finally  rests  on  at  the  end  of  its 
vision,  that  counts. 


156  The  Heroine  in  Bronze 

I  began  to  go  there  and  so  made  the  acquaint 
ance  of  the  proprietor  and  found  that  he  was 
Swiss  and  had  been  a  hotel  clerk  in  many  parts 
of  Switzerland. 

Thus  in  after-dinner  talks  with  him  I  too  could 
spend  much  of  my  summer  in  Switzerland,  where 
most  I  wished  to  be.  He  made  it  possible 
for  me,  by  his  descriptions,  to  follow  her  from 
place  to  place.  I  saw  as  with  my  own  eyes  the 
blue  of  Lake  Leman  —  she  was  to  be  there ; 
I  read  under  old  chestnut  trees  on  the  slopes  of 
Haute  Sawie;  now  and  then  lifting  my  eyes  to 
look  across  the  lake  at  Lausanne,  where  also 
she  was  to  be ;  where  Gibbon  finished  his  De 
cline  and  Fall  —  and  where,  perhaps,  I  would 
complete  mine.  My  host  was  a  Savoyard, 
and  he  was  always  homesick  for  the  vineyards  in 
which  he  had  worked  as  a  boy,  had  played  as  a 
youth,  had  begun  to  dream  of  life  as  a  man.  It 
was  homesickness  for  native  vineyards  that 
explained  the  artificial  grape-vines  clambering 
around  his  dinner  tables. 

Thus  as  the  summer  rose  to  its  zenith  of 
power,  life  descended  to  its  nadir  of  nothingness. 


The  Waiting  157 

Now  it  was  August,  and  the  Solstice  raged. 
An  August  noon  in  New  York  !  As  you  look 
down  Fifth  Avenue,  long  and  straight,  ablaze 
with  light  and  aquiver  with  heat,  a  solitary 
distant  figure  starts  to  cross  it,  a  shining  figure. 
It  is  the  snow-white  Moslem  of  the  city,  the 
'street-sweeper  —  moving  not  to  his  minaret  of 
prayer,  but  to  his  mound  of  dust.  Out  at  the 
Zoological  Garden,  in  a  stagnant  pool,  the  rose- 
colored  heron,  with  head  hidden  under  its  wing, 
stands  on  one  leg,  like  a  plant  in  the  ooze  of 
Indian  marshes,  flowering  magnificently.  In 
their  cages,  the  tigers  of  Siberia  lie  flat  against 
opposite  walls  as  if  to  be  removed  as  far  as 
possible  from  each  other's  bodies :  blood-heat 
within  them,  blood-heat  outside.  A  gray 
squirrel,  that  master  of  nimbleness,  lies  stretched 
on  a  shaded  rock  in  the  reservoir  wall  as  still 
as  a  newt,  pressing  its  hot  stomach  against  the 
cool  stone.  Far  out  in  the  middle  of  the  reser 
voir,  the  surface  of  which  is  a  sheet  of  still  azure, 
matching  the  azure  of  the  sky,  a  tiny  boat  is 
being  pushed  hither  and  thither  as  the  skipper 
with  his  dip-net  collects  out  of  the  blue  the  white 


158  The  Heroine  in  Bronze 

feathers  of  gulls  that  have  moulted.  My  Swiss 
hotel-keeper  described  for  me  the  flocks  of  white 
gulls  which  in  August  float  on  Lake  Leman. 
Had  I  been  a  gull  that  summer  I  think  I  would 
have  moulted  no  feather  in  the  reservoir  of 
Central  Park  —  not  if  I  had  had  wings  for  ocean 
travel.  On  the  parched  slope  of  Riverside 
Drive,  under  a  sun-smitten  oak,  a  nurse  with  a 
closed  fan  drowses  beside  the  carriage  of  a  sleep 
ing  infant;  and  at  her  feet,  curled  on  its  back 
with  its  paws  in  the  air,  a  dreaming  bull-terrier 
snarls  through  his  muzzle  at  the  brazen  sky. 
Below  the  group,  at  the  foot  of  the  slope,  the 
great  Hudson  sleeps  or  moves  toward  the  Bay 
as  in  a  dream;  and  looking  northward  to  the 
hills  through  which  it  has  come  dreaming,  you 
see  the  horizon  muffled  in  amethyst.  On  the 
green  in  Central  Park,  on  that  western  edge  of 
it  where  stands  a  scant  grove  of  oaks  and  maples, 
the  Park  sheep  lie  suffering,  even  in  their  half- 
grown  fleeces.  The  gaunt  old  shepherd,  sitting 
on  the  ground  with  his  back  against  a  tree  where 
the  shadow  falls,  keeps  his  eyes  on  them  from 
force  of  habit.  Beside  him  his  young  collie 


The  Waiting  159 

lies  with  his  nose  between  his  paws,  watching 
also.  In  the  eyes  of  the  young  dog  is  the  steadi 
ness  of  instinct ;  in  the  eyes  of  the  old  man  lies 
the  stillness  of  memories. 

August  twilight  in  New  York !  An  orbless, 
flameless  fury  more  deadly  than  sun-heat.  As 
you  stagger  homeward,  out  on  the  steps  of  some 
unoccupied  apartment  building  you  are  just  able 
to  see  through  the  darkness  there,  on  a  stone 
abutment,  the  caretaker;  a  man  from  the 
tropics,  a  newcomer  from  the  West  Indies  — 
black;  motionless  there  as  an  Arab  in  the  fur 
nace  of  arid  sands.  Further  on,  another  black 
man  from  the  tropics  —  further  on,  another 
black  man  from  the  tropics :  Lybian  figures  in 
the  desert  of  the  city  night.  Thus  centuries 
ago  their  race  may  have  crouched  around  the 
marble  entrances  of  palaces  in  ancient  Carthage 
under  the  rule  of  the  Caesars. 

August  nights  in  New  York ! 

And  every  night  like  a  low  star  above  the 
burning  sands  of  life,  my  lamp  —  with  its  beam 
on  my  work.  My  only  companion  —  that 
cool  figure  of  radiant  girlhood.  That  fragrant 


160  The  Heroine  in  Bronze 

maid  of  life's  dawn.  That  unwilted  image  of 
constancy.  That  flower  of  trust,  shedding  on 
me  in  my  sweat  and  toil  and  discouragement 
and  despair  the  freshness  of  an  April  dew-bent 
Narcissus. 


CHAPTER  III 

ILL  that  summer  no  letter.  Not  a 
message  to  me  from  her  moun 
tains,  at  the  foot  of  which  grew 
the  flower  of  a  day  and  on  the 
summits  of  which  lay  the  snows 
of  ages.  Could  she  be  touched  neither  by  the 
pathos  of  the  brief  or  by  the  desolation  of  the 
lasting  ?  Would  she  be  warned  neither  by  the 
glacier  nor  by  the  rose? 

To  confront  this  studied  silence  of  hers  I 
marshalled  one  hope:  that  clearer  thought 
would  dawn  on  her ;  that  her  heart  would  then 
hold  out  against  an  erring  judgment;  that 
until  she  had  returned  she  would  not  decide  ir 
revocably.  If  she  would  but  return  unpledged ! 
All  summer  my  heart  cried  to  her:  wait,  wait, 
wait !  Come  back  unpromised,  come  back  free ! 
And  all  that  summer  I  built  and  built  and 
built  for  her;  all  the  forces  within  me  were 
called  upon  to  work  for  her.  For  it  must  now 

M  161 


1 62  The  Heroine  in  Bronze 

be  divulged  that  while  I  had  no  thought  of 
putting  her  into  one  book,  I  was  secretly  putting 
her  into  another. 

When  I  arrived  in  New  York,  I  was  carried 
away  by  the  daily  spectacles  of  the  streets. 
Especially  at  night  there  passed  before  me  the 
procession  of  things  seen.  If  you  are  thought 
ful,  you  must  have  become  aware  that  this  is 
your  own  experience :  that  wherever  you  live, 
as  the  last  thing  each  night  your  mind  casts  up 
the  account  of  the  sun.  There  is  some  saving 
power  within  you  which  would  lay  hold  of  that 
worthiest  to  live  —  the  trait  of  strength  —  the 
act  of  leadership  —  the  quality  of  mercy  — 
every  best  thing  in  the  world.  When  the  mem 
bers  of  a  family  come  together  at  night  around 
the  fire,  speak,  and  then  lapse  into  common 
silence,  some  one  will  break  the  silence  with  a 
narrative  of  the  day  which  held  the  wit,  the 
gayety,  the  wisdom,  the  justice  of  life. 

But  after  I  had  come  to  know  her,  every 
night  I  thought  of  her  also ;  and  thus  between 
thinking  of  her  and  thinking  of  the  most  per 
fect  little  story  of  the  day,  the  two  became 


The  Waiting  163 

naturally  acquainted:  she  drew  the  story  to 
herself,  the  story  drew  her  to  itself :  they  be 
longed  to  each  other,  they  grew  together. 

On  the  night  of  the  first  of  January  of  that 
year  I  had,  then,  begun  a  book,  the  plan  of 
which  was  that  on  every  night  throughout  the 
year  I  should  write  down  the  one  occurrence  of 
the  day  that  asserted  its  right  to  abide  as  the 
best  the  world  had  offered :  and  at  the  end  of 
the  year  to  make  of  these  a  sheaf  of  the  days 
to  send  to  her. 

This  is  the  story  I  found  and  wrote  down  the 
very  day  she  sailed  :  — 

As  I  wandered  over  the  city,  toward  noon,  it 
chanced  that  I  was  walking  down  the  long 
avenue  of  elms  which  shade  the  Mall  in  Central 
Park.  Near  the  entrance  to  this  avenue  there 
stands,  as  you  may  know,  a  bronze  figure  of 
Shakespeare.  One  day  in  the  spring  of  1864, 
when  the  people  of  this  nation  were  at  war  with 
one  another  and  that  tragedy  saddened  every 
life,  some  citizens  of  the  city  yet  had  the  breadth 
of  nature,  the  long  historic  prospective,  to  meet 
under  the  young  leaves  of  April  in  the  ancient 


164  The  Heroine  in  Bronze 

sunlight  and  dedicate  this  monument  of  peace 
on  the  three  hundredth  anniversary  of  the  birth 
of  the  poet  of  humanity. 

The  poet  stands  there  on  his  pedestal.  As 
the  years  go  by,  one  of  the  elm  trees  behind 
him  stretches  out,  nearer  and  nearer,  one  of  its 
boughs  as  if,  like  a  human  hand,  to  touch  his 
shoulder  —  the  touch  of  nature.  He  stands 
there  with  an  open  book  in  his  hand,  his  eyes 
fixed  not  on  the  book,  but  on  the  earth  before 
him  —  on  that  dust  out  of  which  he  evoked  the 
vast  throng  of  his  human,  his  immortal,  children. 

As  I  drew  near  that  day  I  observed,  quite 
motionless  before  the  statue  of  the  poet,  the 
figure  of  an  elderly  gentleman  with  a  profile  as 
keen  and  sharp  as  any  on  a  Greek  coin.  He 
had  on  a  soft  black  hat  and  a  well-worn  black 
lounge  suit ;  his  linen  was  emphatically  respect 
able  and  his  shoes  well  cared  for.  His  whole 
demeanor  suggested  some  thread-bare  recluse 
of  one  of  the  libraries  who  might  have  come 
forth  for  a  breath  of  fresh  air  from  some  dim 
alcove. 

He  stood  looking  up  into  Shakespeare's  face, 


The  Waiting  165 

unconcerned  about  my  approach,  a  sensitive 
but  resolute  friend.  As  I  drew  nearer,  his 
revery  reached  its  close,  and  he  turned  away; 
but  having  gone  a  few  steps,  he  stopped,  as  one 
who  remembers  the  very  purpose  that  brought 
him  thither;  with  a  smile  at  his  own  absent- 
mindedness  he  thrust  his  hand  in  his  coat 
pocket  and  jerked  out  a  white  flower;  and 
coming  back  close  under  the  statue,  tossed  it 
up  so  that  it  lodged  on  Shakespeare's  arm. 
For  a  moment  he  lingered,  smiling  at  his  deed, 
and  then  happier  went  his  way.  He  perhaps 
one  of  the  lonely  in  the  city  of  millions  —  per 
haps  without  a  single  living  tie.  But  his  heart 
must  find  something  on  which  to  lavish  its 
affection,  and  so  he  had  walked  back  along  the 
high-road  of  history  three  hundred  years  till  he 
reached  that  other  heart  which  had  understood. 
That  night  I  wrote  the  scene  down.  "  It  is 
what  she  would  have  done,"  I  said.  And  forth 
with  I  removed  the  scholarly  recluse  from  the 
story  and  put  her  in  his  place:  I  saw  her  as 
tossing  a  white  flower  of  remembrance  towards 
Shakespeare's  eyes. 


1 66  The  Heroine  in  Bronze 

The  climax  of  the  whole  summer  occurred  one 
Saturday  in  the  last  week  of  August. 

The  night  had  been  too  hot  for  sleep.  Dawn 
brought  no  breeze.  The  sun  as  it  rose  flashed 
on  no  dew.  My  sheep  in  the  Park,  if  they 
cropped  the  grass,  found  it  warm  and  dry  as 
their  wool.  As  I  got  out  of  bed  to  lower  the 
window  awnings  the  cloth  felt  as  though  a  hot 
iron  had  just  been  passed  over  it. 

Human  nature  in  me  came  to  an  end  that 
day,  work  would  be  impossible,  there  stretched 
out  a  strange  prospect  of  idleness,  of  a  holiday 
—  my  one  holiday  during  those  scorching 
months.  As  I  resolved  to  take  one,  instantly 
all  that  was  in  me  turned  toward  the  sea  —  my 
arms,  my  face,  my  breast,  my  feet  longed  for 
the  cold  sea.  I  was  twenty  years  old,  a  dweller 
in  a  pasture  land,  before  I  had  ever  seen  the  great 
mother  of  mankind.  Only  in  stories,  in  his 
tory,  had  I  heard  the  Ocean.  It  was  a  year 
or  two  before  this  that  one  summer  twilight,  awe- 
stricken  and  breathless,  I  had  first  drawn  near 
the  edge  of  the  rolling  wonder  of  the  rolling 
planet,  the  cradle  of  our  race,  —  the  story  of 
our  wanderings  —  the  symbol  of  our  hope. 


The  Waiting  167 

Idle  for  a  while  that  morning,  I  stood  at  my 
windows,  looking  out  on  the  roofs.  A  skylight 
was  pushed  open,  and  a  scullery  maid  climbed 
out  and  crept  over  to  a  little  wooden  stool  near 
a  smoking  chimney- top.  She  carried  a  bottle  of 
cleansing  fluid  and  some  scraps  of  cloth  in  one 
hand  and  in  the  other  a  pair  of  pink  ball  slip 
pers  ;  and  seating  herself,  she  began  merrily  to 
clean  the  toe  of  one  of  the  slippers :  the  universe 
that  morning  was  reduced  to  a  point  —  to  the 
soiled  toe  of  that  slipper.  After  a  while,  she 
drew  out  a  letter,  her  eyes  devoured  it.  The  hot 
kitchen  smoke  issued  a  few  feet  away  and  drifted 
across  her  face ;  she  was  unaware.  The  sun 
poured  down  its  flame  on  her  head ;  it  was 
unnoticed.  Hard  work,  coarse  work,  meant 
nothing.  Her  ugliness  meant  nothing.  She  may 
not  have  asked  of  life  very  much,  but  the 
little  she  asked  she  got :  that  night  on  the  deck 
of  a  steamer  on  the  moonlit  Hudson  or  in  some 
pavilion  at  the  edge  of  the  Atlantic  she  would 
be  dancing  with  the  writer  of  that  letter. 
Frousy,  ragged,  glorious  little  scullion  —  with 
her  slippers  and  her  lover. 


1 68  The  Heroine  in  Bronze 

She  had  noticed  me  standing  at  my  windows 
with  a  proprietor's  full  right  to  enjoy  the  view : 
what  did  she  care?  Every  housetop  might 
have  been  crowded  with  observers,  and  she  would 
have  sat  there  undisturbed,  cleansing  her  slipper 
toes  and  dreaming  of  her  waltz. 

Turning  away  with  a  pang  at  the  contrast 
between  the  story  there  and  the  one  within  me, 
I  went  across  to  the  north  side  of  my  apart 
ment,  where  a  small  window  disclosed  a  glimpse 
of  a  street  and  a  church.  In  the  belfry  of  a 
church  my  flock  of  pigeons  sat  listless;  they 
scarce  preened  their  feathers;  and  some  sat 
out  on  the  mouths  of  the  gargoyles  as  if  to 
be  as  near  as  possible  to  the  gushing  shower 
whenever  it  should  arrive.  Presently  a  huge 
pouter  pigeon,  which  did  not  belong  to  the 
flock  of  my  meek  ones,  alighted,  and  strutting 
officiously  about  began  to  push  them  over  the 
precipices.  Then  he  flew  out  to  the  gargoyles 
and  pushed  those  off.  I  said  he  was  a  parson 
pigeon  —  thinking  himself  entitled  to  strut  and 
tyrannize  because  Nature  with  a  sense  of  humor 
had  made  him  a  pouter.  Never  do  I  see  the 


The  Waiting  169 

gargoyles  of  the  church  without  suspecting  it 
is  not  the  church  only  that  needs  gargoyles : 
the  church  members  should  have  gargoyles  also 
—  to  wash  them  off  —  to  drain  away  their  soot. 

Something  occurred  to  end  my  fancies  about 
the  pigeons.  The  rattle  of  a  wagon  was  heard, 
the  whistle  of  a  youth ;  the  wagon  stopped 
opposite,  the  youth  jumped  down  from  the 
driver's  seat,  and  hurrying  to  the  rear  of  his 
wagon  began  to  pile  loaves  of  bread  into  a 
basket.  His  cap  was  set  on  the  back  of  his 
head  to  display  to  advantage  his  thick  curled 
foretop ;  his  clean  shirt-sleeves  were  rolled  half 
way  back,  revealing  his  goodly  arms.  As  he 
grasped  his  basket  and  turned  toward  the 
house,  his  whistle  was  checked,  he  stood  still. 
Moving  slowly  down  the  street,  with  one  hand 
sliding  along  the  church  fence  and  with  the 
other  grasping  a  cane  which  tapped  the  side 
walk,  came  a  stranger  smitten  with  eyes  of  per 
petual  night ;  before  the  church  doors  he  paused 
and  groped. 

The  lad  softly  put  down  his  basket  and  with 
slow,  reverential  footsteps  went  over  and  took 


170  The  Heroine  in  Bronze 

him  by  the  arm :  he  needed  no  introduction  ex 
cept  that  of  humanity.  Removing  his  own  cap, 
he  led  him  into  the  church.  A  moment  later  he 
reappeared,  sprang  for  his  basket,  delivered  his 
loaves,  jumped  to  his  seat,  and  was  gone. 

It  was  early  that  morning,  yet  I  wrote  this 
story  down  as  the  pastel  of  the  day,  persuaded 
I  should  see  nothing  more  fit.  Besides,  when 
night  fell,  I  should  be  far  away.  When  she  read 
it,  mayhap  it  would  help  her  to  remember  a 
blind  youth  who  dwelt  opposite  the  church  — 
blinded  by  Love :  and  mayhap  she  might  decide 
to  come  to  him  and  guide  him  to  the  altar. 

In  the  afternoon,  under  the  steel  roof  of  the 
vast  station  where  the  detonations  of  engines  as 
they  pulled  in  and  drew  out  shattered  the  drum 
of  the  ear,  I  sat  at  the  window  of  an  overcrowded 
train  —  on  my  way  to  the  ocean.  Men  with 
hats  off,  coats  off ;  shopgirls  with  wilted  waists, 
wilted  faces.  At  last  the  train  drew  out  and 
shot  across  the  reedy  marshes  and  hot  sands; 
sometimes  along  a  road-bed  with  sun-baked  vines 
crawling  as  over  an  earth  furnace;  at  spots 
scrub-oak  blasted  by  fires,  and  low  pine  withered 


The  Waiting  171 

by  smoke  and  flame.  Then  hours  later  the  low 
level  moors  and  the  first  cool  breath  of  air 
through  the  coaches ;  and  then  from  my  window 
far  off  I  saw  the  evening  sky  fretted  with  still 
clouds  of  green  and  gold;  and  under  them  the 
level  shoreward  billows  of  the  cold  sea  —  the 
blue  and  silver  sea. 

At  a  small  hotel  I  engaged  for  the  night  one 
of  the  smallest  of  the  rooms,  and  as  I  opened  it 
paused  to  survey  its  luxury :  a  cheap  washstand, 
on  the  rack  of  which  hung  two  little  pink- 
bordered  ragged  towels ;  a  pitcher  with  a  broken 
handle  suggested  a  one-winged  penguin  sitting 
upright  and  disconsolate  on  its  eggless  nest; 
on  the  floor  a  small  quadrilateral  oilcloth,  at  the 
edges  of  which  only  the  eye  could  trace  a  pat 
tern  ;  on  an  iron  bedstead  a  white  counterpane  - 
not  white;  across  one  wall  a  drapery  of  faded 
chintz  under  which  no  doubt  were  nails  where 
clothing  might  be  hung ;  here  and  there  over  the 
carpet  the  huge  discolorations  of  orgies.  As 
quickly  as  possible  and  with  great  gladness  of 
heart  I  locked  the  room  in  and  locked  myself 
out. 


172  The  Heroine  in  Bronze 

I  had  my  dinner  in  a  restaurant  on  a  side 
street  and  then  walked  out  to  the  promenade 
which  stretches  for  miles  between  the  city  and  the 
sea.  I  was  one  of  a  hundred  thousand  souls 
in  the  place  that  August  Saturday  night;  and 
two  currents  of  souls,  one  passing  southward 
and  the  other  passing  northward,  met  and  min 
gled.  I  turned  southward  and  began  the  long 
walk  —  very  slowly  and  observantly  —  along 
that  thoroughfare  of  the  invitations:  past  the 
long  sea-invading  piers  flashing  with  their 
myriad  electric  lights  —  past  the  shops  offering 
the  wares  of  the  world  —  past  the  music-stands 
and  past  music  where  there  was  no  stand  —  past 
the  little  dens  of  the  credulities  —  past  the  bowl 
ing-alleys  —  past  the  candy  shops  and  the  fish 
shops  —  past  all  the  tests  of  strength  that  one 
saw  and  past  all  the  tests  of  strength  that  one 
did  not  see. 

I  walked  alone,  yet  I  think  not  alone,  for  I 
prayed  that  she  walk  with  me. 

At  last  I  reached  the  end  of  the  promenade, 
and  descending  the  steps,  reached  the  wide, 
hard,  sloping  floor  of  the  sea  and  went  on  — 


The  Waiting  173 

till  the  last  cottage  had  been  passed  —  the  open- 
air  hospital  for  children  —  the  summer  resting- 
place  for  tired  mothers.  Farther  and  farther 
along  that  hard,  clean  floor  of  the  sea,  on  one 
side  the  breaking  billows,  on  the  other  the  land. 

The  country  along  there  is  sand-dunes  rising  in 
hillocks.  There  is  scrub  oak,  scrub  evergreen, 
creepers  that  can  stand  salt  spray,  dwarfed  bushes 
with  leaves  as  pungent  as  brine,  even  blackberry 
bushes.  Where  the  dunes  front  the  surf,  they 
are  highest,  having  been  piled  up  by  winds  and 
tides  and  drifting  sands  and  held  in  place  by  the 
fastnesses  of  vegetation. 

Under  one  of  these,  the  edge  of  which  was  over 
hung  by  a  bramble  of  blackberries,  where  the 
sand  was  clean  with  only  a  black  tuft  of  seaweed 
here  and  there  and  white  shells  I  stopped  and 
looked  back :  far  behind  me  lay  the  city,  its  lights 
barely  visible,  all  its  noises  lost. 

I  had  around  me  the  ancient  open  of  Nature. 
And  I  threw  myself  at  ease  down  on  the  sand. 

The  moon  was  rising :  the  rim  of  the  disk 
looked  like  some  dull  red  mountain  top  at  in 
finite  distance;  then  slowly  the  entire  orb  dis- 


174  The  Heroine  in  Bronze 

engaged  itself  from  the  tossing  waters.  Its  path 
of  light  began  to  strike  across  the  tops  of  the 
spray  and  I  began  to  see,  breaking  before  me  on 
the  sand,  the  fragile  laces  of  the  waves.  One  be 
hind  another,  one  behind  another,  one  behind 
another,  ever  the  same,  ever  the  same,  before 
me,  a  youth,  as  they  were  before  some  youth 
who  watched  them  unknown  thousands  of  years 
before.  Higher  rose  the  moon,  the  sky  where 
the  stars  flashed  thick  became  violet-dark.  All 
the  sand  turned  to  silver,  the  sea  took  on  a 
blacker  violet,  its  laces  formed  and  dissolved  like 
snow.  I  there,  watching  it  all ;  sometimes  turn 
ing  my  face  to  the  bushes  overhead  through  which 
I  found  now  and  then  some  fainter  star. 
The  vast,  solemn,  lonely  beauty  of  the  night ! 
******* 

Slowly  I  walked  toward  the  edge,  little  by  little 
delaying  the  luxury ;  deeper  I  waded  in  until  one 
breaker  leaped  against  me  with  its  foam.  Then 
with  out-thrown  arms  of  impatient  joy  I  plunged 
forward  and  swam. 

Long  I  revelled  in  my  strength  in  that  wild 
energy.  Then  far  out  where  the  surface  was  more 


The  Waiting  175 

still  I  turned  and  crossed  my  arms  under  my 
head  and  crossed  my  feet  and  gave  myself  up  to 
that  bosom  of  all  tenderness  and  all  storm  — 
letting  the  tide  bear  me  landward.  The  moon 
lit  drops  flashed  and  broke  over  the  swimmer. 
The  ocean  became  as  a  golden  couch  —  a  tender 
ness  of  the  old  mother  to  him :  no  other  golden 
bed  had  he. 

I  did  not  return  to  my  hotel,  not  to  that  room, 
not  to  the  bed  there.  I  made  me  a  pillow  of  my 
coat  and  with  the  green  boughs  of  the  brier  as 
my  roof  and  the  waves  breaking  a  few  feet  away 
and  the  night  wind  cool  upon  me,  I  lay  down. 

^c  •Jf  If  :Je  He  %  % 

So  few  things  I  had  with  me  there :  stars  and 
moon,  the  sea  and  the  sound  of  it,  the  wind,  the 
sand,  the  green  thorn,  summer  and  darkness. 
All  the  rest  I  put  away  from  me  —  the  city  up 
the  beach  and  what  the  city  plenteously,  too 
plenteously,  offered  to  its  hundred  thousand  revel 
lers.  That  I  might  be  alone  and  into  my  soli 
tude  draw  her  nearer  to  me  across  the  distance. 

I  there  with  solemn  beauty  of  the  summer 
night :  calling  to  her,  calling,  calling,  calling. 


176  The  Heroine  in  Bronze 

Before  me  the  ceaseless  wash  of  the  ocean; 
within  me  the  ceaseless  breaking,  breaking, 
breaking  of  all  my  nature  shoreward  to  her  out 
of  the  deeps. 

Calling,  breaking  —  calling,  breaking.  Until 
worn  out  to  weariness  I  slept. 

******* 

Long  afterwards,  I  awoke,  or  half-awoke,  and 
with  open,  or  half-open,  eyes  I  saw  not  the  moon, 
now  high  in  the  heavens  shining  down  on  the 
Atlantic,  but  that  sea  of  dreams  —  that  older 
sea  of  love  between  Sestos  and  Abydos  —  the 
Hellespont  —  the  sea  of  Leander  and  Hero. 

At  summer  twilight  I  saw  Leander  come  down 
to  the  edge  of  the  Hellespont  and  gaze  across  the 
strait.  Then  winding  his  mantle  about  his  head 
to  keep  it  dry  above  the  waves,  for  a  while  he 
looked  for  the  signal  of  the  star  that  was  to  flash 
out  from  Hero's  isolated  tower  beset  with  rocks 
and  noises  of  the  sea.  Even  while  he  waited  the 
light  flashed  and  he  knew  that  Hero  watched. 

As  I  sank  back  into  slumber  I  thought  how 
all  that  summer  no  beam  had  reached  me  from 
a  dark  shore.  Only  the  bronze  statuette  on  my 


The  Waiting  177 

desk  set  the  star  of  night  to  shine  on  the  troubled 
sea  of  my  romance. 

She  was  the  Hero  of  that  summer  —  and  the 
heroine. 

When  I  awoke  again,  the  east  was  rosy,  the 
level  billows  of  the  sea  broke  gray  at  my  feet, 
the  moon  was  gone,  the  lights  of  the  city  were 
out,  above  it  stood  the  Morning  Star. 

I  swam  again  as  the  sun  sent  its  first  golden 
light  across  the  gray  waves. 


THIRD   PART 
THE  GETTING  HOME 


CHAPTER  I 


day  a  wall  of  a  rare  old  house 
in  a  beautiful  quarter  of  the  city 
glowed    dark-red.     The    vine    of 
mighty  muscles  twisted  about  her 
windows    was    burning    its   cool 
forest  fires  :   the  year  at  wane  had  come  at  last 
to  October. 

I  had  not  endured  to  see  the  place  since  that 
mournful  day  of  early  summer  when  it  stood 
closed,  darkened,  empty.  But  a  wistful  after 
noon  it  was  no  longer  possible  to  resist  wandering 
by  ;  and  what  first  drew  the  eye  in  the  distance 
down  the  street  was  that  vine  with  its  autumn 
promise.  And  the  house  now  waited  :  the 
front  doors  had  been  unbarred  ;  the  front  steps 
were  fleckless;  the  brass  of  knob  and  knocker 
shone  with  the  distinction  between  brass  and 
brassiness  ;  the  window-panes  had  a  diamond-like 
brilliancy;  the  curtains  inside  hung  fresh. 
Almost  her  hands  parted  them,  her  face  almost 

181 


1 82  The  Heroine  in  Bronze 

looked  out.  Even  the  tall  vases,  one  on  each 
side  of  the  steps,  had  had  their  soil  renewed  and 
were  brimming  with  forget-me-nots  —  the  most 
impatient  of  flower  faces.  As  she  got  out  of 
her  carriage  (she  kept  her  carriage  and  would 
not  use  a  motor  car),  she  would  pause  to  touch 
them  —  a  little  custom  of  hers  sometimes  after 
a  longer  ab'sence. 

I  went  home  wild  with  joy  and  with  one 
troubled  thought :  what  would  be  her  greeting  ? 
For  it  was  certain  that  she  would  arrange  in 
some  non-committal  way  to  see  me  at  least 
once:  there  were  things  she  would  wish  to 
know.  Her  reception  of  me  would  definitely 
depend  upon  whether  she  returned  free  or 
pledged.  I  thought  I  should  know  instantly. 
The  first  expression  of  her  eye,  the  first  word, 
tone,  touch,  would  divulge  the  truth. 

It  is  easier  to  wait  by  the  month  than  by  the 
hour;  and  with  the  certainty  that  she  might 
arrive  any  hour  there  was  yet  an  interminable 
week  to  drag  by.  Too  restless  to  work,  I  began 
to  wander  over  the  city,  proving  to  myself  by 
this  sign  and  by  that  sign  that  October  really  had 


The  Getting  Home  183 

come,  already  was  going,  and  how  needlessly 
she  mocked  the  season  by  her  absence.  I  made 
me  a  little  Pilgrim  Scrip  of  changes  of  earth 
and  sky  and  city  by  which  daily  to  refresh  my 
discouraged  feet. 

One  day  in  the  Park,  I  saw  many  sparrows  on 
the  grass,  stripping  the  stems  of  seed :  all 
feeding  together.  They  had  only  appetites 
now,  no  emotions  —  the  law  of  the  twain  having 
become  the  law  of  the  flock.  The  wings  of  some 
wore  white  patches,  as  if  prophetically  flecked 
for  future  snows :  had  it  only  been  actual  snow 
instead  of  snowlike  feathers !  One  day  out 
on  Riverside  Drive,  at  a  bathing  place  between 
a  beef-packing  establishment  and  a  dock  where 
the  city's  ashes  are  emptied,  little  boys  of  the 
poor  ceased  to  dive  into  the  Hudson,  having 
been  gloomily  gathered  from  buckboards  to 
blackboards,  from  a  living  river  of  nature  to  the 
dry  rivers  of  maps.  One  day  a  florist's  window 
was  blazoned  with  mountain  oak  boughs,  which 
glowed  like  coals  in  a  grate,  forerunners  of 
hoar  frosts ;  and  how  gladly  many  times  would 
I  have  given  a  year's  royalties  for  a  black  frost. 


184  The  Heroine  in  Bronze 

One  day  ripe  pumpkins  appeared  on  the  green 
grocers'  variegated  embankments  around  their 
shop  doors.  My  heart  warmed  to  one  with  his 
ruddy  countenance  and  clean  linens  as  he 
picked  up  a  pumpkin  while  talking  to  a  cus 
tomer  and  with  an  upward  and  downward  move 
ment  of  his  arms  fondled  it  as  though  he  were 
about  to  pitch  it  into  a  wagon.  From  those 
motions,  I  knew  that  he  had  been  a  country  boy, 
had  followed  the  wagon  into  the  fields,  had  helped 
to  load  it  with  pumpkins  when  silver  spangled 
their  gold.  One  day  the  transitory  summer 
life  of  the  city,  which  had  ascended  to  roofs  and 
housetops,  began  to  move  downward.  Washing 
rains,  chilly  winds,  flapping  awnings  sent 
clarionet  and  cornet,  viol  and  mandolin  under 
cover.  One  night  the  last  dinner  was  eaten 
with  my  Swiss  host  in  his  little  back  yard  with 
its  artificial  grapevines  in  memory  of  his  be 
loved  Savoy.  Even  as  he  and  I  lingered  over 
our  cigars,  clouds  rushed  across  the  stars  above 
our  heads,  drops  fell  on  our  faces,  and  a  gust  of 
wind  blew  our  napkins  indoors  after  us.  I  com 
plained  :  — 


The  Getting  Home  185 

"Surely  by  this  time  enough  snow  must  have 
fallen  in  the  Alps  to  drive  people  home!" 

At  last  one  evening  upon  my  return  to  my 
apartment  a  letter  protruded  beneath  the  hall 
door.  I  snatched  it,  tore  it  open. 

They  were  at  home,  she  wrote.  Could  I 
come  the  next  afternoon  for  some  tea? 

That  was  all  —  an  invitation  to  see  them, 
for  some  tea,  and  not  sent  straight  by  messenger, 
but  with  deliberation  by  common  post. 

I  saw  —  them !  They  were  all  plainly  visi 
ble  the  following  afternoon  on  the  veranda. 
There  was  not  only  tea  to  be  drunk  bodily, 
there  was  a  tea-party  of  some  fifteen  guests 
to  be  assimilated  by  the  rebellious  faculties. 
I  was  purposely  the  last  guest  to  arrive,  being 
of  a  mind  to  emulate  her  example  in  deliberate- 
ness;  and  instead  of  going  straight,  I  would 
gladly  have  had  myself  sent  by  parcels-post, 
had  it  been  possible  to  take  advantage  of  such 
indirection  of  the  Government. 

Remembering  how  we  had  parted,  I  did  not 
hold  out  my  hand;  but  the  moment  she  saw 
me  she  extended  hers  at  arm's-length.  She  was 


1 86  The  Heroine  in  Bronze 

pouring  tea  for  some  one  and  asking  how  many 
lumps  of  sugar  were  desired;  and  she  poised 
the  sugar-tongs  with  a  lump  in  them,  as  I  went 
forward,  and  kept  her  hold  on  the  sugar-tongs 
with  two  fingers,  and  gave  me  the  three  others. 
But  the  three  others  did  not  tell  me  anything : 
Nature  for  ages  has  developed  the  thumb  and 
the  forefinger  for  the  higher  needs  of  civiliza 
tion;  the  three  others  are  millions  of  years 
behind  and  remain  what  they  were  at  the  start 
—  one's  tongs :  taking  hold  of  a  piece  of  wood 
or  of  a  piece  of  humanity  with  the  same  deadly 
precision  and  impartiality.  She  gave  me  lier 
tongs  :  my  preference  would  have  been  that  she 
shake  hands  with  the  sugar-tongs.  Thus  I 
found  out  nothing  from  her  hand-clasp.  She 
had  been  smiling  before  I  was  announced,  and 
the  smile  continued  with  no  difference.  And 
she  looked  me  in  the  eyes  as  though  I  were 
not  there,  and  indeed  I  felt  myself  but  a  roving 
phantom  of  other  days.  Then  bending  very 
graciously  to  one  side,  so  that  she  might  com 
municate  with  some  one  behind  me,  by  this 
gesture  and  with  a  nod  to  me,  she  intimated 


The  Getting  Home  187 

that  if  I  would  retire  to  a  certain  table  and 
chair  and  tea-cup,  I  would  find  a  companion 
who  would  meet  all  my  social  requirements. 

The  guests  were  seated  for  their  veranda 
tea-party  in  the  form  of  a  crescent.  She  flashed 
at  the  top  of  the  crescent  —  its,  star.  The  seat 
designated  to  me  was  at  one  tip  of  the  cres 
cent  —  at  the  point  where  the  new  moon  ceased : 
on  all  sides  of  me  but  one  reigned  nonentity. 
Unimportant  as  my  arrival  was,  it  seemed  by 
general  understanding  to  complete  the  after 
noon  social  orchestra,  which,  thereupon,  entered 
upon  the  rendition  of  a  stated  programme. 
Whether  I  was  to  be  fife  or  drum,  piccolo  or 
bassoon,  yet  remained  to  be  discovered  by  me ; 
but  it  would  be  the  part  that  none  of  the  other 
performers  had  cared  for,  they  having  plainly 
monopolized  the  leading  roles  of  the  score. 

As  I  approached  my  tea-table  it  appeared 
that  I  was  duetted  with  what  seemed  an  able- 
bodied  violoncello  which  had  evidently  been  a 
good  deal  played  upon  at  public  entertainments. 
She  was  completely  fitted  out  with  a  requisite 
set  of  screws  —  they  were  plainly  visible  in  and 


1 88  The  Heroine  in  Bronze 

about  her  head;  but  she  instantly  conveyed 
the  impression  that  some  of  the  strings  were 
gone,  had  snapped.  No  sooner,  however,  had 
she  with  admirable  technique  drawn  her  bow, 
than  it  became  clear  that  the  strings  which  held 
good  were  accustomed  to  do  duty  likewise  for 
those  missing.  Had  but  one  string  been  left, 
she  would  have  played  that  to  the  world  with 
unabated  vigor,  and  even  greater  skill,  for  the 
whole  instrument.  And  that  made  her  one  of 
Life's  master  musicians :  people  who  can  do 
that  are  the  master  musicians  of  the  world.  The 
other  members  of  the  tea  orchestra  should  have 
risen  and  lifted  their  cups  to  her. 

From  where  I  sat  —  at  the  uttermost  extrem 
ity  of  Cape  Horn  —  an  up-ocean  view  of  the 
other  guests  was  to  be  had  if  any  one  cared  to 
have  it.  My  companion  soon  let  me  know  that 
this  was  a  farewell  tea-party,  the  breaking  up 
of  the  band  of  summer  tourists  and  ocean  trav 
ellers,  who  have  such  insatiable  ways  of  hold 
ing  on  to  each  other  after  they  land :  they  had 
chosen  thus  to  drown  their  melancholy. 

The  sons  of  the  house  were  absent ;   they  had 


The  Getting  Home  189 

gone  down  in  a  tug,  I  learned,  to  meet  the 
steamer,  at  quarantine ;  had  shouted  their  greet 
ings  from  the  deck  of  the  tug  to  the  deck  of  the 
steamer  and  then  had  hurried  back  up  the  bay 
and  back  to  their  college. 

Next  to  the  hostess  on  one  side  sat  the  mother 
and  son,  of  whom  early  in  this  narrative  fearful 
mention  has  been  made :  next  to  her,  on  the 
other  side,  sat  the  sister  and  the  brother,  also 
of  previous  fearful  mention.  I  thanked  Prov 
idence  that  at  least  they  were  both  there,  those 
rivals:  it  was  proof  that  she  had  not  yet  de 
cided  between  them.  Halfway  down  the  cres 
cent  on  one  side  I  saw  the  Paludal  Aunt.  Op 
posite  on  the  other  side  of  the  crescent  sat  the 
Commodore,  and  with  him  —  what  troubled  me 
—  was  the  family  physician.  The  two  spoke 
earnestly  together  with  eyes  often  turned  toward 
the  hostess.  Yet  still  oftener  the  Commodore's 
glance  —  which  would  have  made  the  Byronic 
reputation  of  a  Corsair  —  wandered  down  to 
my  companion;  whereupon,  unfailingly,  the 
violoncello  rendered  back  for  him  a  movement 
that  could  not  be  misunderstood,  even  by  a 


i  go  The  Heroine  in  Bronze 

spectator :  it  was  a  plain  capricioso,  a  palpable 
non  troppo  tar  do. 

This,  then,  was  the  way  she  greeted  me ! 
There  was  time  and  quiet  for  thinking  it  all  over 
that  night.  It  was  a  beautiful  party.  They 
made  up  a  scene  of  such  irrepressible  high  spirits. 
They  were  permeated  by  the  luxurious  tran 
quillity  of  mind,  the  buoyancy  of  temperament, 
which  is  the  last  hall-mark  of  the  well-born  and 
the  well-to-do.  They  radiated  that  versatility 
of  New  York  people  whose  lives  consist  in 
changes  from  one  set  of  pleasures  to  another 
set  of  pleasures,  the  sole  regret  and  hardship 
being  that  they  cannot  enjoy  both  at  once.  It 
really  was  an  orchestra.  Their  whole  conversa 
tion  was  melodious  and  harmonious  with  re 
fined  little  exclamations  and  outcries  and  reminis 
cences  of  the  homeward  voyage,  of  things  seen 
in  other  lands.  They  seemed  to  illustrate  a 
society  given  up  to  musical  migrations. 

I  felt  a  little  betrayed  —  misused.  I  had 
been  drawn  into  a  situation  that  I  could  not 
adorn,  for  I  had  never  travelled.  Somehow 
the  experience  left  me  with  the  comic  feeling 


The  Getting  Home  191 

of  a  guest  who  might  have  been  invited  to  a 
Spanish  dinner  because  he  had  never  been  to 
Spain  —  who  had  been  asked  to  dress  as  a  torea 
dor,  because  he  had  never  seen  a  bull-fight. 

Only  when  I  was  leaving  did  she  speak  with 
me,  and  she  was  then  claimed  by  those  crowded 
about  to  sever  the  tourist  ties.  Quite  without 
any  special  interest  she  asked :  — 

"Did  you  go  home  this  summer?" 

I  said  I  had  not  gone  home.  With  the  same 
smiling  inadvertence  she  asked :  — 

"Did  you  write  the  story?" 

I  said  I  was  still  writing  it;  it  had  grown  into 
a  book. 

That  was  the  voluminousness  of  her  conversa 
tion.  But  there  was  one  other  thing.  Once  I 
surprised  her  eyes  searching  me :  with  a  look 
in  them  as  though  the  tea-party  did  not  exist, 
as  though  she  sat  there  alone  among  them  — 
thus  I  one  swift  instant  surprised  her,  trying  to 
read  me. 

What  troubled  me  most  was  the  presence  of 
the  family  physician  with  a  countenance  sym 
pathetic  and  serious,  and  the  long  talk  with  the 


192  The  Heroine  in  Bronze 

father.  The  weight  of  it  could  not  be  thrown 
off.  It  pointed  like  a  finger  to  another  barely 
discoverable  fact  —  that  there  was  a  change  in 
her :  as  little  as  I  saw  of  her,  I  saw  that.  Some 
thing  grave  had  occurred.  But  I  could  ask  no 
questions,  I  could  do  nothing.  The  seating  of 
my  rivals  on  each  side  of  herself  and  the  placing 
of  me  at  the  greatest  possible  distance  reaffirmed 
upon  her  return  what  she  had  declared  on  her 
departure  —  that  the  old  tie  between  us  had 
been  snapped. 

I  did  not  go  to  the  house  again. 

One  forenoon  as  I  worked  there  was  a  touch  on 
my  bell  and  a  messenger  delivered  a  note :  — 

"Was  the  tea  so  bad  that  afternoon?  You 
did  not  drink  yours.  You  tasted  it  twice  and 
then  were  sure.  It  might  be  better  another 
time.  Could  you  come  to-morrow  and  see? 
And  if  you  are  writing  the  story,  why  not  bring 
it  and  read  it  to  me  ?  I  wish  you  would  do  this, 
for  I  desire  very  much  to  hear  it." 

The  hour  of  my  reckoning  with  her  had  come 
at  last  ! 

The  house  was  very  quiet  as  I  walked  through 


The  Getting  Home  193 

the  hall.  I  had  been  received  at  the  door  with 
the  guarded  air  that  the  visitor  was  to  be  no 
one  else.  When  I  stepped  out  on  the  veranda, 
at  one  end  of  it  she  had  already  risen  to  greet 
me  —  alone. 

She  stood  quite  still,  statuelike.  The  veranda 
might  have  been  some  beautifully  draped 
salon  of  sculpture  and  she  the  only  figure  in  the 
salon.  Still,  statuelike,  she  stood.  About  her 
fell  vestments  of  the  softness  and  tint  of  woven 
ivory.  There  were  bands  of  purest  white.  There 
were  other  bands  of  blue  —  the  blue  of  summer 
dawn:  at  her  belt  were  white  violets.  Her 
exquisite  head  with  its  banded  gold  had  a  little 
unconscious  forward  droop  toward  me  —  as  of 
questioning  welcome :  and  as  if  there  rested  on  it 
also  the  weight  of  chastened  nobleness.  There 
was  a  change :  a  new  dignity,  a  new  gravity ;  a 
little  of  the  girlishness  gone,  more  of  the  woman 
unfolded.  She  gave  me  her  hand  with  no  more 
self-consciousness  than  if  she  had  placed  in  mine 
the  hand  of  another  woman.  And  she  ex 
claimed  with  quiet,  quick  relief  as  her  eyes 
rested  on  it :  — 


194  The  Heroine  in  Bronze 

"  You  have  brought  the  story.     I  am  so  glad  ! " 

I  replied  dryly :  — 

"The  opening  of  it.  The  opening  will  be 
enough." 

We  had  our  tea  on  another  part  of  the  ve 
randa,  conversing  yet  saying  nothing :  and  then 
we  returned  to  where  she  had  been  before. 

A  chair  had  been  placed  for  her  in  that  corner, 
not  the  chair  of  an  invalid,  yet  restful  and  as 
designed  to  give  aesthetic  peace  to  one  who  might 
need  peace  of  every  kind,  and  need  it  at  once.  A 
little  bookstand  with  books  scattered  over  stood 
beside  it.  For  me  a  table  had  been  brought 
suitable  to  a  reader's  convenience,  and  beside  it 
stood  a  chair  in  which  John  Milton  might  have 
sat  to  dictate  Paradise  Lost;  it  suggested  to  me 
my  lost  one. 

Both  of  our  seats  faced  toward  the  open. 

Ready  to  listen,  she  leaned  forward  in  her 
chair  and  placed  her  elbows  on  her  table;  the 
face  propped  between  the  palms,  the  eyes  turned 
from  me  toward  the  garden.  It  was  the  posture 
of  a  self-shielded  listener  who  wishes  to  listen 
with  her  whole  being. 


The  Getting  Home  195 

Without  prefatory  word  I  began  :  — • 

A  June  morning  long  years  ago  —  three-quar 
ters  of  a  century  ago.  A  little  town  of  rich  proud 
people  in  a  land  of  deep  pasture.  On  the  edge 
of  it  an  old  building  of  Gothic  architecture  with 
castle  ivy  on  its  brown  walls ;  a  lawn  of  flower 
beds  and  forest  trees.  One  of  the  romantic  senti 
mental  boarding-schools  of  the  South  for  young 
ladies  of  that  mid- Victorian  period  in  the  United 
States.  Old  times,  old  manners,  old  customs, 
old  actors  and  actresses  of  the  human  comedy, 
long  since  fallen  back  to  dust. 

The  characters  of  the  story :  the  three  maiden 
sisters  who  were  at  the  head  of  the  Seminary ;  a 
young  music  teacher  —  the  only  man  in  the  insti 
tution  ;  a  young  farmer  whose  estate  was  several 
miles  distant ;  a  young  Southern  banker  and  plan 
ter  from  New  Orleans ;  and  the  heroine — one  of  the 
graduates.  A  chapel  scene  with  the  heroine  read 
ing  her  essay ;  another  scene  under  the  trees  of  the 
lawn  where  the  lovers  meet :  they  love  at  sight. 

I  finished.  I  had  read,  not  as  one  who  reads  a 
story,  but  a  verdict,  a  vindication,  his  own  ac 
quittal.  I  laid  the  sheets  aside  and  waited.  If 


196  The  Heroine  in  Bronze 

plainness  had  been  needed,  there  was  inevitable, 
inescapable  plainness :  now  she  knew  that  her 
wound  had  not  been  dealt  by  me :  she  had  in 
flicted  it  herself.  It  was  she  who  had  brought 
on  the  storm  that  burst  over  her  head;  I  had 
stayed  under  clear  skies.  She  had  conjured  up 
the  destructive  hurricane ;  I  had  wended  my  way 
across  a  landscape  of  still  fruit. 

For  a  long  time  she  did  not  stir.  Then  with 
her  face  still  at  rest  on  the  palm  of  one  hand  she 
withdrew  the  other  and  extended  it  toward  me 
sidewise :  — 

"  I  understand  now.  It  is  all  only  too  plain." 
Her  voice  took  up  life  where  it  had  been  broken 
off  between  us,  and  she  clasped  my  hand  with 
long  close  strength.  There  in  the  hand,  not 
on  the  lips,  lay  all  her  regret  for  the  wound 
she  had  dealt  me :  for  the  injustice  of  which  she 
was  guilty.  Both  voice  and  hand  sought  to 
bring  back  unclouded  happy  days  and  to  throw 
open  again  the  gates  of  the  future.  Alas!  the 
first  unclouded  days  —  they  were  gone !  The 
happy  gates,  the  first  gates  —  they  were  closed 
and  never  now  would  we  pass  through  them! 


The  Getting  Home  197 

In  an  instant  all  that  I  had  held  against  her 
—  and  this  was  nearly  everything  that  a  man 
can  hold  against  a  woman  —  was  blotted  out. 
Not  a  word  was  to  be  wasted  on  it,  and  gather 
ing  up  the  sheets  of  the  story,  I  said  to  her  as 
one  who  but  too  willingly  begins  everything 
once  more :  — 

"Tell  me  about  your  summer." 

She  leaned  back  in  her  chair,  seeking  its 
restfulness;  the  strain  of  all  this  had  left  her 
trembling :  almost  her  face  was  as  a  white 
violet.  With  her  head  at  rest  and  with  her 
hands  in  her  lap  she  said  to  me  with  a  smile  :  — 

"I  have  not  had  any  summer." 

She  studied  my  face  incredulously,  for  it 
must  have  worn  a  look  of  mystification :  — 

"Have  you  not  heard?  Did  no  one  tell 
you  ?  I  am  just  getting  well.  There  are  little 
breakdowns  and  weaknesses  all  through  me 
yet  because  my  strength  has  not  come  back. 
And  that  is  why  they  put  this  chair  here  for 
me.  And  that  is  why  —  "  her  smile  was  plain 
tive  —  "that  is  why  I  need  it." 

Her  story  must  evidently  be  told  before  relief 


198  The  Heroine  in  Bronze 

could  come  to  her  —  as  it  had  come  to  me.  She 
placed  herself  at  ease  in  her  chair  until  she 
faced  me,  and  then  she  began :  — 

"You  have  thought  I  had  a  happy  summer. 
We  went  straight  to  Switzerland,  and  by  the 
time  we  reached  Switzerland  I  had  developed 
typhoid  fever.  I  was  ill  a  long  time  —  so  ill 
that  I  came  very  nearly  not  being  ill  any  more. 
Another  long  time  I  was  getting  well  enough  to 
be  moved.  And  then  for  another  long  time 
they  were  taking  me  from  place  to  place ;  from 
the  mountains  where  I  fell  ill  to  the  seashore; 
from  the  seashore  to  the  lakes ;  from  the  lakes 
back  to  the  valleys ;  and  then  from  the  valleys 
up  the  mountains  again,  —  with  a  nurse  and 
physician,  and  with  every  one  doing  all  that 
could  be  done." 

She  paused  to  give  me  a  look  —  almost  aggres 
sive  in  its  self-defence  :  — 

"It  was  not  what  happened  between  us  that 
brought  on  typhoid.  After  they  had  studied 
my  case  the  physicians  told  my  father  that  it 
was  probably  nature's  settlement  for  my  last  year 
at  college  and  first  year  in  society.  There  was 


The  Getting  Home  199 

a  great  deal  of  hard  work,  that  last  year  in  col 
lege  ;  there  was  a  great  deal  besides  that  was  not 
hard  work.  There  was  ambition,  a  struggle,  to 
get  honors.  And  from  this  year  of  overwork 
I  passed  at  once  into  society.  And  then  hard 
work  of  another  kind  began  there  —  and  more 
things  that  were  not  work,  and  ambition  to 
win  honors  again.  I  suppose  I  never  paused 
to  consider  that  there  could  be  an  end  of  my 
strength,  and  that  nature  is  made  of  things  that 
can  only  stand  so  much.  The  physicians 
thought  this :  that  typhoid  had  marked  me  as 
a  desirable  subject  for  punishment  —  at  least 
for  a  warning  as  to  my  future :  I  suppose  the 
moral  is  that  if  I  am  ever  again  a  schoolgirl,  I 
must  not  strive  for  honors;  and  that  if  I  am 
ever  again  a  debutante,  I  must  go  to  the  wall  and 
nourish  against  the  wall." 

The  old  faint  gleams  of  humor  were  beginning 
to  return :  — 

"But  then  you  see :  after  I  had  typhoid  what 
had  taken  place  between  us  made  the  typhoid 
worse.  Shock  and  worry  made  the  typhoid 
worse;  and  then  the  typhoid  made  the  worry 


2oo  The  Heroine  in  Bronze 

worse ;  and  so  I  had  to  contend  with  both ;  and 
that  is  why  I  did  not  have  any  summer." 

The  current  of  her  thought  was  seeking  the 
easiest  channel :  it  were  better  left  to  run  as  it 
would  with  no  words  from  me  set  up  as  stones 
for  it  to  dash  against. 

"It  was  a  shock  —  what  you  said  that  morn 
ing.  You  may  not  know  that  a  girl's  school 
days  are  sometimes  the  most  beautiful,  the 
most  sacred.  My  college  life  was  that  —  the 
most  beautiful  part  of  my  memory,  the  most 
sacred  thing  in  my  past.  As  it  drifts  away, 
it  becomes  dearer,  a  closed  experience  of  my 
girlhood,  a  rounded-out  shape  of  something  that 
I  once  was.  The  shock  was  that  you  were  go 
ing  to  destroy  this  —  it  was  to  be  invaded, 
beclouded,  ruined.  And  that  brings  me  to  the 
other  shock.  This  I  think  you  can  understand, 
I  believe  all  young  people  can  understand  it: 
it  is  the  discovery  that  the  older  world  is  going 
to  make  use  of  us  —  of  us  girls  and  boys,  us 
young  people,  if  it  can;  and  it  nearly  always 
can.  During  my  first  year  in  society  I  had  in 
timations  that  people  there  would  use  me  if 


The  Getting  Home  201 

they  could;  but  you  can  protect  yourself  from 
such  people  if  you  have  the  courage  to  do  it, 
and  those  things  have  made  no  impression. 
But  that  morning !  You  stood  for  the  world 
that  would  use  me :  by  you  I  was  to  be  offered 
to  the  public  for  sale  —  in  trade.  By  you ! 
And  the  most  beautiful  part  of  my  life  —  my  girl 
hood  —  was  to  be  at  auction  !  That  was  when 
the  shock  came  to  me  which  we  who  are  young, 
I  suppose,  find  to  be  our  first  bitterest  lesson  of 
distrust.  It  is  the  old  cup  of  anguish  to  the 
young :  I  know  it  was  my  first  cup  of  anguish." 

The  deepest  of  all  silence  had  fallen  upon  us 
and  lasted.  She  had  leaned  forward  once  more 
and  with  her  arms  on  the  book-stand  and  her 
face  buried  in  her  palms :  — 

"  I  could  not  believe  it  of  you !  I  could  not ! 
Yet  I  did  not  know  what  else  to  believe.  The 
time  was  so  short  that  morning !  And  as  you 
described  the  story  you  were  going  to  write,  it 
was  all  myself  —  my  college,  my  commencement 
day  —  my  essay  —  myself  —  and  —  you !  " 

Her  strength  showed  that  it  was  taxed ;  and 
yet  new  strength  began  to  come  and  it  brought 


2O2  The  Heroine  in  Bronze 

new  peace.     I  waited  for  her  to  go  on  and  she 
asked  for  nothing  but  that  I  should  wait:  — 

"  That  was  one  way  I  looked  at  it.  Then 
another  way  opened  up,  and  all  through  the 
typhoid  I  never  could  take  my  eyes  from  that. 
You  came  to  me  that  morning,  as  you  had  said, 
with  something  beautiful  flaming  in  you.  There 
really  was  a  light  on  your  face  —  an  unforget- 
able  light.  Then  I  saw  that  light  go  out.  I 
put  it  out.  I  shall  never  forget  the  look  in 
your  eyes  as  you  saw  me  extinguish  it.  It  was 
as  if  I  had  murdered  in  you  something  immortal 
just  beginning  to  live.  When  I  began  to  think 
of  that  —  I  got  worse.  If  you  really  had  come 
to  me  in  the  first  great  moment  of  your  career, 
I  had  thrown  myself  across  your  path ;  I  had 
thwarted  you,  had  tried  to  end  at  once  your 
dream  of  greatness;  and  I  think  I  understood 
what  a  dream  that  was.  Those  were  the  two 
troubles  all  summer;  I  was  wretched  and  ill 
with  the  thought  that  you  might  go  on  with 
this  work ;  and  I  was  wretched  and  ill  with  the 
thought  that  you  might  not  go  on  with  it.  It 
was  kind  of  choice  between  your  destroying  my 


The  Getting  Home  203 

happiness  and  my  destroying  your  happiness. 
It  was  not  easy  —  that  decision." 

Thus  she  shrived  her  soul  of  its  error,  not  its 
sin ;  and  that  power  of  pardon  in  nature  which 
is  so  patient  with  our  mistakes  when  these  grow 
out  of  our  ideals,  that  spirit  of  peace  which  never 
withholds  its  presence  from  our  sincerity,  must 
have  descended  upon  her  and  granted  its 
absolution. 

She  turned  toward  me  :  — 

"  Can  I  say  anything  more?  " 

******* 

At  the  very  end  she  brought  out  what  must 
have  been  in  her  consciousness  from  the  be 
ginning,  and  had  been  held  back  for  that 
very  reason :  it  was  the  crux  of  the  whole 
truth :  — 

"  I  suppose  all  the  trouble  came  about  be 
cause  I  am  a  woman  and  because  a  woman 
takes  things  to  herself  that  are  not  meant  for 
her.  That  must  have  caused  a  great  deal  of 
trouble  in  the  world !  But  a  woman  has  to 
have  some  faults !  And  that  is  among  her  useful 
ones.  Have  you  thought  of  a  woman's  other 


2O4  The  Heroine  in  Bronze 

peril,  the  fault  just  the  reverse :  not  to  take  to 
herself  the  things  that  are  meant  for  her  ?  Have 
you  the  least  idea  what  other  women  think  of 
such  a  woman,  what  they  say  of  such  a  woman  ? 
I  wonder  what  you  men  think?  So  between 
taking  to  herself  the  things  that  are  not  meant 
for  her  and  not  taking  to  herself  the  things  that 
are  meant  for  her,  she  has  to  walk  a  very  — 
straight  —  and  —  narrow  —  road." 

She  leaned  back  and  smiled  resignedly  at  the 
hardships  of  her  sex.  For  the  first  time  the  old 
gayety,  the  old  tide  of  humor  overflowed.  The 
black  cloud  which  had  hung  so  long  overhead 
began  to  break  up  and  to  show  white  edges 
with  sunlight  rushing  through  to  the  earth. 
She  betrayed  signs  of  fatigue  and  I  sought 
to  dismiss  the  whole  subject  by  making  it 
ridiculous :  — 

"There  must  a  kind  of  woman  who  for  her 
own  peace  of  mind  should  never  take  a  walk  out 
of  doors  on  a  clear  night :  if  she  saw  a  shooting 
star,  she  would  say  it  was  being  shot  at  her 
and  that  she  knew  who  did  the  shooting." 

She  retorted  in  kind  :  — 


The  Getting  Home  205 

"When  a  woman  of  that  kind  goes  out  with 
you,  you  should  take  the  precaution  to  see  that 
it  is  cloudy." 

Then  with  grave  sympathetic  impulse  she 
turned  to  me :  — 

"Tell  me  about  your  summer." 

I  answered  summarily :  — 

"Oh,  I  have  not  had  any  summer.  It  was 
one  morning  early  in  June  —  now  it  is  an  after 
noon  in  the  middle  of  October :  that  has  been  my 
summer ! " 

As  I  was  about  to  take  my  leave,  she  gave  a 
little  outcry  of  humorous  recollection :  — 

"Oh,  wait!  Do  not  go!  I  had  nearly  for 
gotten.  There  was  something  to  tell  you.  Did 
you  know  that  you  had  the  seat  of  honor  at  the 
tea-party  the  other  afternoon  ?" 

That  had  not  been  my  opinion,  but  I  took 
refuge  in  conventions :  — 

"I  had  supposed  all  the  seats  were  seats  of 
honor." 

"But  did  you  realize  who  your  companion 
was?  And  why  you  were  not  more  formally 
introduced?  She  is  to  be  the  new  member  of 


206  The  Heroine  in  Bronze 

the  family:  the  Commodore  is  going  to  be 
married." 

I  thought  of  the  strings  that  still  held  good. 

She  now  took  up  this  little  story  and  she 
blazed  with  the  spirit  of  mischief :  — 

"That  was  another  thing  that  resulted  from 
the  typhoid !  I  became  ill  in  a  hotel,  where 
she  had  just  made  our  acquaintance.  She  was 
not  allowed  to  nurse  me,  there  were  so  many 
others.  But  make  things  for  me  she  did.  And 
while  she  showered  attentions  on  me  with  one 
hand,  she  made  nice  things  for  the  Commodore 
with  the  other.  Sometimes  the  hands  got 
crossed  and  the  things  that  were  meant  for  me 
went  to  him.  That  showed  she  really  liked 
him  —  her  sending  him  the  things  meant  for  me : 
she  made  an  exposure — a  Southern  exposure.  I 
liked  her  for  it  —  for  the  warm  side.  It  meant 
that  she  really  cared  for  him  to  the  point  of 
forgetting  herself.  Otherwise  she  would  not 
have  had  him,  for  of  course  I  could  have  pre 
vented  it  all  if  I  had  wished.  After  I  began  to 
get  well,  she  and  I  arranged  it  —  that  the  Com 
modore  must  be  married.  We  had  no  under- 


The  Getting  Home  207 

standing  between  ourselves.  Two  of  us  women 
accomplish  so  much  more  when  we  work  without 
one.  An  understanding  makes  us  responsible 
and  we  do  not  like  to  be  responsible.  So  she 
and  I  have  planned  that  there  shall  be  one 
wedding  in  the  family.  It  will  be  an  alliance 
between  the  yacht  and  the  —  tug.  Which  will 
sail  away  with  the  other  I  do  not  know.  It 
will  depend  upon  the  weather:  each  of  them 
will  have  the  better  of  it  in  its  own  weather." 

We  were  walking  through  the  hall  toward  the 
front  door :  she  glanced  from  side  to  side  :  — 

"And  so  these  dear  ancestral  halls  will  soon 
not  be  mine  any  longer  —  to  rule  in  them.  I 
have  ruled  in  them  a  long  time.  And  now 
just  when  I  am  beginning  to  understand  the 
beauty  of  being  a  real  tyrant  in  them,  I  abdi 
cate  the  throne  and  become  —  a  step-daughter. 
What  the  tug  will  by  and  by  do  with  me  —  that 
is  a  hazard  of  deep  ocean  !" 

Just  inside  the  door  she  threw  all  this 
pleasantry  aside  and  said  with  soberness  :  — 

"Now  will  you  bring  the  rest  of  the  story  ?  I 
am  intensely  interested,"  and  for  an  instant 


2o8  The  Heroine  in  Bronze 

her  eyes  questioned  mine :  then  the  thick  lashes 
veiled  them.  Thus  she  had  released  her  hold  on 
the  past  and  grappled  the  future. 

As  I  walked  away  I  felt  much  as  though  I  had 
been  experiencing  not  in  the  realm  of  music,  but 
in  the  reality  of  life  a  great  Symphony  of  Bee 
thoven  —  the  Pastoral  Symphony :  — 

A  traveller  has  in  his  journey  reached  a  region 
of  country  of  such  charm  that  he  stops  there. 
But  hardly  has  he  entered  upon  full  enjoyment 
of  its  pleasures  before  a  storm  suddenly  bursts 
over  the  landscape.  You  feel  the  darkness, 
the  chill;  you  dread  the  disturbance  and  the 
destruction ;  you  shudder  most  at  peril  of  the 
bolt  which  strikes  so  blindly  and  so  fatally. 
Then  as  suddenly  as  it  came  the  storm  has  gone, 
the  sun  is  out  again,  birds  take  up  their  songs, 
the  peasant's  hymn  of  praise  and  thanksgiving  is 
heard ;  and  upon  the  black  mass  of  the  retreating 
thunder  clouds  is  thrown  the  music  of  immortal 
safety. 

Our  quarrel  had  come  as  quickly ;  and  now  it 
had  dissolved  in  rain  and  light  —  and  in  spirit 
ual  music  above  the  dying  storm.  Still  I  could 


The  Getting  Home  209 

but  recall  a  note  of  Beethoven's  about  his  whole 
Symphony :  that  the  spectator  was  left  to  solve 
the  situation  for  himself !  This  was  now  the 
case  as  regarded  my  symphony! 

There  was  much  to  ponder  that  night,  chiefly 
the  change  in  her,  the  growth  of  nature.  This 
had  showed  itself  in  the  filial  sacrifice  of  her 
supremacy  in  the  household  that  her  father 
might  enjoy  a  second,  an  autumnal,  happiness. 
Her  displacement  as  the  social  leader  of  the 
family  pushed  to  a  further  stage  her  aloofness 
from  its  other  members :  this  had  always  made 
her  a  slightly  isolated  figure  in  the  domestic 
group.  I  wondered  whether  that  power  which 
had  early  taken  the  place  of  another  parent  to 
her  were  not  partly  responsible  —  the  strong 
old  house-mother  herself  —  who  stood  alone 
among  the  other  houses.  Birthplaces  lay  upon 
their  children  their  traits  —  their  littleness  or 
their  largeness,  their  weakness  or  their  strength. 
It  was  certain  that  no  other  member  of  her 
family  would  ever  be  involved  in  her  nuptials. 
She  had  planned  her  father's ;  her  father  could 
never  plan  hers.  The  groom  would  wed  all 
there  was  of  her. 


2io  The  Heroine  in  Bronze 

And  it  had  not  escaped  me  how  disciplined  for 
matrimony  she  had  further  been  by  brothers  — 
those  big,  sturdy,  ungovernable,  hardy,  riotous, 
college  lads.  Had  I  not  received  of  late  a  sug 
gestive  letter  from  a  week-end  friend,  a  dealer  in 
rubber,  who  during  his  vacation  had  availed  him 
self  of  its  travels  to  journey  on  to  wedlock?  In 
the  letter  he  had  reviewed  his  conjugal  disad 
vantages  on  this  point. 

"Dear  Old  Comrade  of  Many  Talks  about 
our  Future :  Be  advised  by  one  who  has  out 
stripped  you  on  the  road  to  his.  When  you 
marry,  let  it  be  a  girl  who  has  spent  her  life 
with  brothers.  Thus  you  may  reap  the  harvest 
of  that  training  which  only  brothers  can  be 
stow.  In  the  family  of  my  wife  there  were  no 
sons,  and  all  the  difficulties  which  she  should 
have  battled  through  with  the  brothers  who 
never  were,  are  being  fought  to  a  finish  with 
the  husband  who  is.  They  are  not  my  fights; 
my  fights  are  a  husband's  fights ;  and  Heaven 
be  my  witness  that  there  are  as  many  of  these 
as  I  can  stand  up  to.  So,  friend,  be  warned, 
be  wise;  and  be  assured  that  the  distinction 


The  Getting  Home  211 

between  a  woman  who  has  been  reared  with 
brothers  and  the  woman  who  has  not  is  as  the 
difference  between  manufactured  rubber  and 
crude  gum.  My  wife  as  to  her  general  knowl 
edge  of  masculine  nature  is  virgin  gum.  She 
is  still  in  the  Congo;  and  I  fear  there  will  be 
many  an  outcry  about  man's  atrocities  before 
I  ever  get  her  to  Belgium." 

Thus  I  dwelt  on  her  perfections:  but  what 
did  her  perfections  profit  me  —  unless  it  were 
thus  to  dwell  on  them? 

Now  followed  weeks  when  the  world  was 
without  a  shadow,  the  lute  without  a  rift.  The 
story  entered  upon  better  days ;  for  her  happi 
ness  passed  into  me,  my  happiness  flowed  into 
my  work,  and  happy  work  is  work  with  breath 
and  wings.  All  because  there  was  faith  re 
stored  between  us  and  an  attachment  now 
sending  deeper  roots  down  into  our  strength. 

She  had  entered  with  delight  upon  the  story 
itself  and  upon  the  study  of  an  old  Southern 
Female  Seminary  with  its  pupils  of  long  ago. 
In  gathering  my  materials  I  had  gone  to  the 
attic  to  ransack  musty  trunks  rilled  with  letters 


212  The  Heroine  in  Bronze 

9 

and  books  and  articles  of  dress  of  the  period. 
Here  I  had  found,  yellowed,  tattered,  moth- 
eaten,  my  grandmother's  music-book.  The 
loose  sheets  almost  fell  open  at  a  much-used 
place,  and  there  I  found  a  song :  I'd  offer  Thee 
This  Hand  of  Mine.  Under  it  in  my  grand 
mother's  handwriting  was  this  memorial :  My 
Graduating  Song. 

Much  delight  she  had  with  this  old  music-book. 

Meantime  the  story  had  begun  to  move  to 
ward  its  depths:  the  heroine  began  to  be  re 
vealed.  One  day  after  a  reading  I  received  no 
praise.  Turning  to  see  why,  I  found  her  re 
garding  me  with  the  most  curious  expression. 
As  nearly  as  it  could  be  interpreted  it  expressed 
an  amused  toleration  of  what  she  had  just  heard 
—  and  of  me:  she  had  the  air  of  having  dis 
covered  what  she  had  been  expecting  to  dis 
cover  ;  but  that  I  was  helpless  in  the  matter, 
and  that  it  was  something  that  she  must  endure : 
she  was  prepared  to  endure  it,  wished  to  endure 
it. 

This  disconcerted  me,  and  I  exclaimed :  "What 
an  expression  !  That  is  a  new  one !" 


The  Getting  Home  213 

Whereupon  the  expression  fled,  and  she  laughed 
outright :  — 

"Is  it  ?  Am  I  expected  to  have  no  more  new 
expressions?  Do  you  mean  that  my  face  has 
already  used  up  its  permissible  expressions?" 

Thus  with  a  jest  she  hid  the  truth,  but  did  not 
remove  it.  I  had  been  silent  once  before ;  this 
time  I  determined  to  speak  at  once :  — 

"What  is  the  trouble  now?" 

Her  face  grew  thoughtful:  — 

"Do  not  let  it  make  any  difference  with  the 
story.  I  beg  you  not  to  let  it  make  any  dif 
ference." 

And  there  came  back  to  her  face  the  same 
look,  —  that  the  story  had  laid  upon  her  a 
burden  which  she  was  resolved  to  bear  —  wished 
to  bear. 

"But  tell  me  what  the  trouble  is!"  I  cried. 

"I  will  not  talk  about  it,"  she  replied,  rising 
to  terminate  the  interview. 

This  was  intolerable  to  me.  I  went  home  at 
the  end  of  my  patience  and  sat  down  to  study 
the  meaning  of  the  mystery.  The  first  trouble 
I  had  understood  at  once ;  she  had  done  every- 


214  The  Heroine  in  Bronze 

thing  to  make  it  understood.  Here  was  trouble 
that  she  tried  to  conceal,  and  when  unable  to 
hide  it,  had  refused  to  declare  its  nature. 

But  the  idea  that  the  story  should  cast  a 
burden  upon  her  was  unendurable.  I  withdrew 
myself  and  my  work.  I  stopped  the  readings, 
stopped  going  to  the  house.  I  could  have 
wished  that  my  apartment  might  have  been 
some  iron  citadel  with  iron  walls,  iron  doors, 
iron  windows,  iron  floors,  that  nothing  could 
escape  from  me  and  my  work  to  her. 

One  day  as  I  worked  there  was  a  touch  on  my 
bell :  a  servant  stood  at  the  door  bringing  some 
thing  delicately.  I  received  it,  and  closing  the 
door,  bore  it  to  my  writing-table.  Lifting  the 
napkin,  I  found  a  card :  — 

"Blanc-mange  for  the  heroine." 

I  sat  staring  at  the  blanc-mange.  It  was  as 
if  Judith,  instead  of  taking  off  the  head  of  Holo- 
f ernes  for  his  misdeeds,  had  walked  up  to  him  and 
mollified  him  with  a  saucer  of  sugar  and  starch. 

I  returned  no  acknowledgment.  A  few  days 
later  a  tray  arrived  with  a  card : 


The  Getting  Home  215 

"Calf's-foot  jelly  and  lady-fingers  —  for  the 
heroine,  who  is  not  very  well  now  and  begins 
to  need  delicacies.  From  one  who  knows  the 
value  of  delicacies  at  the  right  moment." 

I  returned  no  acknowledgment. 

Then  the  iron  citadel  began  to  be  bombarded. 
Things  appeared  to  come  through  the  door, 
through  the  windows,  through  the  floor.  A 
basket  of  orchids  seemed  to  arrive  through  the 
ceiling.  One  day  a  note  entered  :  — 

"Dear  Sir :  Pardon  my  addressing  you,  being 
a  total  stranger.  But  I  am  making  a  collection 
of  autographs;  and  being  a  great  admirer  of 
your  work,  I  feel  that  my  collection  would  be 
sadly  incomplete  without  something  from  your 
pen.  A  stamped  envelope  with  my  address  is 
enclosed.  If  with  the  autograph  you  could 
send  a  sentiment,  it  would  be  much  appreciated. 
If  you  cannot  give  both  the  autograph  and  a 
sentiment,  a  sentiment  is  preferred.  Do  oblige 
me  with  a  sentiment." 

I  made  no  acknowledgment. 

Some  days  later  an  envelope  arrived  contain- 


216  The  Heroine  in  Bronze 

ing  a  small  sheet  of  paper,  rose-hued  and  rose- 
scented.  On  it  I  found  written  two  stanzas  of 
my  grandmother's  graduation  song :  — 

"  I'd  offer  thee  this  hand  of  mine, 

If  I  could  love  thee  less. 
But  hearts  as  warm  and  pure  as  thine 

Should  never  know  distress. 
My  fortune  is  too  hard  for  thee, 

'Twould  chill  thy  dearest  joy  ; 
I'd  rather  weep  to  see  thee  free, 

Than  win  thee  to  destroy. 

"  I  leave  thee  in  thy  happiness, 

As  one  too  dear  to  love, 
As  one  I  think  of  but  to  bless, 

As  desolate  I  rove. 
But  O,  when  sorrow's  cup  I  drink, 

All  bitter  though  it  be, 
How  sweet  'twill  be  for  me  to  think 

It  holds  no  drop  for  thee." 

I  made  no  acknowledgment:  I  thought  I 
would  absent  me  from  felicity  yet  a  while. 

The  bombardment  continued.  One  day  a 
note  struck  me  on  the  breast :  — 

"Dear  Sir:  May  I  offer  a  suggestion?  It 
might  be  of  service.  If  at  any  time  the  heroine 


The  Getting  Home  217 

should  need  outdoor  air,  you  might  think  of 
taking  her  to  the  Park ;  but  there  are  so  many 
heroines  in  the  Park  !  I  am  writing  to  say  that 
my  father  has  a  yard,  that  the  yard  has  a  ramble, 
and  that  the  ramble  leads  to  some  seats.  The 
seats  are,  one  of  iron  and  the  other  of  marble. 
It  is  all  very  quiet  and  private,  and  you  would 
be  quite  alone  there  with  her.  In  the  stillness 
of  the  autumn  sunshine  you  could  be  very 
thoughtful,  and  she  could  be.  I  myself  will  see 
that  you  and  she  are  not  disturbed.  I  give 
you  the  word  of  one  who  is  very  much  interested 
in  her  welfare  and  in  your  welfare  and  in  the 
future  of  you  both." 

Then  I  could  absent  me  from  felicity  no 
longer. 

It  was  the  middle  of  one  afternoon  of  Indian 
summer.  The  sunlight  fell  faint  and  silvery. 
The  air  was  so  mild  that  one  could  sit  out  of 
doors  in  a  yard  with  a  book :  drifting  leaves  of 
the  book,  leaves  drifting  from  the  trees. 

An  afternoon  of  stillness,  the  stillness  of 
Indian  summer.  The  dweller  in  the  city  knew 


218  The  Heroine  in  Bronze 

that  out  in  the  country  over  fields  and  woods 
and  water  that  stillness  rested :  that  in  the 
motionless  air  hung  a  faint  haze  as  of  vanished 
camp-fires,  as  the  burning  of  many-colored 
leaves  in  the  mountains.  Indian  summer ! 
Spirit  of  yearning  for  things  to  be,  pain  of  the 
unattainable  in  things  near,  regret  for  things 
gone.  In  spring  the  beauty  of  the  world  was 
sharply  defined  and  embodied;  it  had  passed 
into  the  myriad  forms  of  nature  to  inhabit 
them.  Now  all  those  forms  have  perished  and 
before  they  perished  they  cast  it  out  again, 
leaving  it  disembodied  and  a  wanderer. 

But  all  homeless  things  touch  us.  And  this 
beauty  of  the  world  without  an  abode,  this 
breath  we  breathe  which  is  the  essence  of  a 
thousand  things  that  have  passed  away,  this 
threat  of  the  final  goal  of  the  universe  which 
will  know  the  finite  no  more,  subdues  us,  chas 
tens  us,  stirs  within  us  our  outcry  against  the 
brevity  of  our  joy. 

It  is  so  old  —  this  silence  and  stillness  of 
the  atmosphere.  As  it  approaches  from  all 
sides  and  encamps  about  the  city,  so  once  on 


The  Getting  Home  219 

the  Campagna  it  beleaguered  the  walls  of  Rome ; 
it  beleaguered  the  walls  of  Troy  before  the 
Argives  camped  there;  it  beleaguered  Babylon. 
All  the  noise  of  New  York  is  less  to  it  than  the 
chirp  of  a  grasshopper  on  a  blade  of  brown 
grass.  The  noises  soon  die  away ;  it  lasts  — 
that  stillness  and  silence  of  the  atmosphere  on 
which  all  things  perish  and  leave  not  a  trace. 

I  turned  into  her  street  and  stopped  beside 
the  hedge :  it  was  turning  sere ;  leaves  rustled 
under  my  feet.  But  I  buried  my  face  in  it 
once  more  as  twice  in  spring  when  it  was 
snow  white  with  bloom  and  fragrance.  I  mur 
mured  in  an  undertone :  — 

"  How  do  you  do?  " 

The  reply  came  at  length  as  from  a  revery 
half  broken :  — 

"  I  do  not  know  how  I  do." 

"  You  are  not  unhappy?  " 

"  No,  not  unhappy." 

"  But  you  are  not  happy !  " 

"  No,  not  happy." 

"  Not  unhappy,  not  happy.  Gray-blue  like 
the  day." 


22O  The  Heroine  in  Bronze 

"  Yes,  gray-blue  like  the  day." 

Our  words  scarce  reached  one  another;  a 
spell  weighed  us  down.  We  spoke  as  though  we 
were  side  by  side  and  yet  too  far  from  one 
another. 

After  a  silence,  her  voice  reached  me  like  some 
echo  of  itself :  — 

"  Did  you  know  that  you  look  like  Indian 
summer?  " 

"Is  it  so  bad?" 

"  Listen  to  this  out  of  a  story  —  an  unwritten 
story:  His  hair  was  dark  oak-leaf  brown  like 
autumn  oak  leaves  after  they  have  fallen 
and  lie  thick  and  crisp  and  curled.  The  Old 
Greeks  often  spoke  of  hyacin thine  hair  —  hair 
that  curls  like  hyacinths.  His  was  hyacinthine. 
Sometimes  there  was  a  dry  blue  mist  in  it  as  of 
Indian  summer.  It  was  not  peaceful,  but  tur 
bulent,  as  on  the  heads  of  young  Greek  athletes 
when  they  came  from  contests  in  the  games. 
On  his  hands  and  face  —  on  his  neck  —  faint 
brown  woodland  shadows  lay.  Sometimes  the 
brown  shadow  on  his  face  had  such  still  depths. 
Oh,  such  still  depths !  His  moustache  was  oak- 


The  Getting  Home  221 

leaf  brown,  no  blue  haze  in  it  but  a  tinge  of 
oak-leaf  red  under  the  brown.  His  eyes  were 
Indian-summer  blue-gray ;  sometimes  there  was 
in  them  a  look  of  such  stillness  and  silence :  then 
perhaps  he  was  thinking  of  his  own  country. 
Did  you  ever  read  that  description  in  any 
story?" 

"  No." 

"  /  have  read  it  in  a  story.  Often  I  wonder 
how  the  story  will  end." 

Her  voice  seemed  to  die  away  upon  the  air. 
Softly  I  called  to  her :  — 

"  Tell  me !  Is  there  much  Indian  summer  in 
your  garden?  " 

"  Not  much.  There  is  never  much  in  any 
garden,  is  there  ?  Only  a  little  blue  pool  of  the 
blue  ocean." 

"  Does  the  Indian  summer  in  your  garden 
cause  you  to  think  of  things  that  have  disap 
peared  there?  " 

"  Sometimes." 

"  Then  sometimes  do  you  think  how  in  spring 
many  things  in  it  acted  as  though  the  garden 
existed  for  them,  belonged  to  them:  soil,  air, 


222  The  Heroine  in  Bronze 

sun,  rain,  dew,  darkness,  —  all  belonged  to 
them?" 

"Why  should  I  tell  you?" 

"  Now  the  garden  is  there  and  they  are  gone. 
They  passed  over  the  surface  of  it  as  a  cloud 
passes  over  the  sky.  And  that  other  flower  — 
the  flower  of  our  spring  —  the  flower  of  our 
youth.  It  too  believes  that  earth  and  air  and 
rain  and  dew  and  sun  and  darkness  are  for  it. 
It  is  as  brief  as  the  others :  by  and  by  the  gar 
den  is  there ;  youth  is  gone." 

"Well?" 

"  Why  do  you  keep  me  waiting  ?  " 

There  was  a  long  silence  :  — 

"  If  I  kept  you  waiting,  it  would  be  cruel,  it 
would  be  foolish.  It  is  unkind  to  ask  me  such 
a  question.  Suppose  I  should  ask  you  a  ques 
tion  :  why  do  you  keep  me  waiting  ?  " 

"  Then  it  comes  back  once  more  to  the  same 
thing  —  the  book.  You  are  waiting  to  know 
me  better  through  the  book  :  is  that  the  truth?" 

"  Would  it  not  be  wise?  " 

"  Then  the  book  is  to  be  the  final  test?  " 

"  It  will  be  a  test." 


The  Getting  Home  223 

"  Tell  me  this :  how  can  it  be  a  fair  test, 
how  can  I  do  my  best  work  on  it,  if  it  throws  a 
shadow  on  you?  " 

"  It  does  not  throw  a  shadow  on  me  :  it  sheds 
a  light." 


CHAPTER  II 

INTER  in  New  York. 

Low  leaden  cloud  beyond  which 
the  eye  cannot  trace  the  disk  of  the 
sun.  Whirling,  twisting,  rebound 
ing  winds  that  sting  the  cheek 
as  freezing  water  bites  the  hand.  The  mud  of 
the  streets  solidified  as  rock.  Roofs,  verandas, 
fences,  door-steps;  the  poles  of  the  telegraph, 
the  posts  of  gas  light  and  of  electric  light  —  all 
ice-cased,  snow-thatched.  Along  the  city's 
great  avenue  by  night  palaces  buried  deep  in 
warmth  with  frosted  window-panes;  through 
curtains  of  damask  and  of  lace  dim  moonlike 
radiance  glimmers.  Waiting  chauffeurs  with 
flapping  arms  buried  deep  in  their  furs  like 
Esquimaux.  The  wide  river  alongside  the  city 
with  rhythmic  ebb  and  flow  between  the  sweet 
tide  of  the  mountains  and  the  salt  tide  of  the 
sea  now  quieted  under  the  rigor  of  the  frost, 
each  bank  far  out  toward  midstream  covered 
224 


The  Getting  Home  225 

with  the  fixed  ermine  and  silver  of  the  frost. 
In  the  narrow  mid-channel  the  grinding  and 
crushing  of  loosened  blocks  of  ice  by  the  careful 
ferry-boats  as  they  barely  force  their  way  to 
the  gray-bearded  piers.  Out  on  the  ocean  great 
mystical  steamers  coming  into  port  as  if  bring 
ing  tidings  from  the  Ice  Age  of  the  earth :  their 
masts  and  decks  spectral  with  the  death  of  the 
North,  their  ice-plated  prows  tossing  aside 
waters  as  white  as  breast  feathers  of  Arctic 
swans.  In  the  Park  under  a  sky  where  the 
sharp-rimmed  moon  rides  full  and  thick  stars 
glisten  in  diamond  ether,  all  nature  snow-hung ; 
nights  as  still,  brilliant,  dead,  as  those  on  Lap 
land  wastes. 

Winter  in  New  York. 

Bleaker,  darker  than  the  winter  in  the  city 
was  the  winter  within  me.  The  book  had  begun 
to  fail.  It  had  opened  well,  it  had  gone  in 
credibly  well  through  the  simpler  stages.  Dur 
ing  those  autumn  days  after  her  return,  es 
pecially,  it  had  moved  as  on  a  high  predestined 
road  to  an  inevitable  goal.  Then  without  warn 
ing  of  its  collapse  it  had  begun  to  totter,  to  go 
Q 


226  The  Heroine  in  Bronze 

to  pieces,  to  fall.  There  was  no  failure,  no 
dimming  of  the  first  vision  of  the  work;  in 
imagination  it  was  a  masterpiece  yet.  My 
trouble  was  the  difference  between  imagining  a 
masterpiece  and  writing  a  masterpiece.  The 
tragedy  of  youth  and  inexperience  was  within 
me  still.  When  the  action  of  the  story  called 
upon  the  scene  the  great  powers  of  the  mind, 
the  great  passions  of  the  heart,  it  lay  beyond 
me,  I  was  no  longer  ruler  over  my  work. 

There  were  times  when  I  put  to  myself  the 
question :  Was  it  youth  ?  was  it  inexperience  ? 
Or  was  I  one  of  those  who  can  imagine  but  not 
create  ?  Did  I  swell  the  vast,  pitiful,  ever  mov 
ing  army  of  the  young  who  all  over  the  nation, 
from  cities,  villages,  farms,  when  glowing 
visions  of  the  imagination  begin  to  rise  within 
them,  throw  down  their  duties,  quit  their  places, 
desert  their  people,  and  enter  upon  the  pil 
grimage  to  New  York  with  faith  that  visions 
will  there  become  achievements?  In  me  as  in 
them  was  it  but  youth's  blind  belief  in  itself, 
which  mistakes  the  desire  to  sing  for  the  gift 
of  song,  the  desire  to  act  for  the  art  of  the 


The  Getting  Home  227 

stage,  the  desire  to  paint  for  the  mastery  of 
color,  the  desire  of  sculpture  for  supremacy  over 
line  ?  And  was  it  to  be  my  bitter  lot  that  I 
asked  only  to  dedicate  myself  to  the  highest, 
but  the  highest  would  not  have  me,  thrusting 
me  back  with  the  rebuke:  you  are  numbered 
among  the  millions  who  must  work  for  bread; 
who  for  all  their  work  will  never  have  bread 
enough  ? 

Now  with  each  reading  it  became  plainer 
to  us  that  the  story  would  be  no  master  work: 
this  was  settled  in  advance  of  the  end.  She 
tried  to  conceal  her  disappointment  —  it  was 
well-nigh  overwhelming :  I  was  lowered  in  her 
eyes  fatally.  But  by  one  of  those  mysterious 
compensations  with  which  Nature  so  often 
equalizes  her  own  inequalities,  as  this  hope 
went  out  in  her,  a  sympathetic  and  protective 
tenderness  came  forth  —  perhaps  woman's  best, 
sublimest  gift  to  a  failing  struggler.  And  there 
became  manifest  in  her  at  the  same  time  the 
practical,  all  but  ungovernable,  impulse  to  inter 
pose,  to  seize  hold  and  direct. 

One   dark   December   afternoon   I   read   the 


228  The  Heroine  in  Bronze 

worst  yet.  I  finished  without  comment,  she 
had  listened  without  comment.  Finally,  at 
sacrifice  of  herself  and  under  stress,  she  spoke 
out  with  unsparing  candor :  — 

"  Why  do  you  not  let  me  make  suggestions  ? 
Point  out  any  mistakes  I  may  possibly  have 
seen  ?  One  who  looks  on  so  often  has  an  advan 
tage  over  one  who  is  in  action.  Why  will  you 
not  let  me  do  this?  " 

With  sternness  toward  myself,  I  answered  :  — 

"Not  one  word  will  I  hear !  Not  a  sugges 
tion  must  you  make  ! " 

She  studied  my  face  curiously:  if  there  was 
no  room  for  such  thing  as  a  masterpiece  within 
me,  to  her  there  was  space  for  magnificent  folly. 
She  laughed  with  humorous  exasperation :  — 

"Do  you  expect  to  be  able  to  see  everything 
in  the  world  that  /  see?" 

"I  expect  to  be  able  to  see  everything  in  my 
work  that  you  see.  It  is  my  office  to  be  able 
to  discover  every  mistake  in  it  that  any  one 
could  discover.  And  that  I  will  do  !  If  I  can 
not,  I  am  not  fitted  for  my  work." 

She  said  good-by  at  the  door;   it  was  snow- 


The  Getting  Home  229 

ing  heavily,  and  as  I  stood  on  the  step  she 
watched,  as  with  a  kind  of  whimsical  enjoyment, 
the  flakes  of  snow  as  they  fell  on  me.  I  do 
not  know  what  enraged  countenance  I  wore, 
but  something  brought  out  uttermost  tenderness 
in  her : — 

"Will  you  come  for  a  walk  to-morrow  after 
noon?  The  paths  through  the  Park  ought  to 
be  cleared  by  then." 

Never  before  had  she  invited  me  to  walk. 

I  went  to  the  Opera  that  night,  and  close  under 
the  golden  roof  of  the  Opera  House  I  hung  far 
over  and  watched  Siegfried :  watched  his  youth 
—  his  wild,  untamed,  singing,  shouting,  Mime- 
beating,  bear-capturing,  sword-forging,  dragon- 
slaying,  spear-shattering,  fire-invading,  maid- 
awakening  youth.  Most  intensely  I  studied 
him  when  in  the  depths  of  the  forest  over  his 
couch  fell  the  forest  music,  dropping  down  upon 
him  from  waving  boughs  and  young  quivering 
leaves  luted  as  by  zephyrs.  I  watched  him 
jerk  his  sword  from  its  scabbard,  and,  striding 
to  the  pool,  slash  for  himself  a  wild  reed,  and 
with  the  breath  of  youth  undertake  to  give  back 


230  The  Heroine  in  Bronze 

to  the  forest  its  high  inimitable  melodies. 
Naught  did  he  deem  necessary  but  breath  and 
reed  and  will  —  to  reproduce  those  myriad- 
linked  harmonies  of  the  winds.  Again  he 
slashed  the  reed  and  breathed  on  it;  a  third 
time  he  shortened  it  and  blew  again.  Ever 
above  him  rolled  the  multitudinous  billows  of 
that  weightless  sea  of  ecstatic  sound  —  the  for 
est  music  :  not  a  note  of  it  on  his  pipe  or  within 
his  power. 

I,  a  youth,  was  vastly  amused  at  him,  another 
youth :  what  would  he  have  thought  of  me  had 
he  watched  me  at  my  desk  —  with  my  breath, 
my  reed,  my  will,  trying  to  produce  offhand  the 
music  of  humanity.  He  made  me  ridiculous; 
and  seeing  myself  ridiculous  I  felt  encouraged. 

The  next  afternoon  I  went  for  the  walk.  A 
heavy  snow  had  fallen,  no  wind  had  followed, 
and  it  still  lay  on  the  trees  as  left  by  the  clouds. 
It  was  my  first  snow- walk  with  her,  and  I  could 
but  marvel  once  more  how  she  always  triumphed 
over  Nature.  Out  in  the  depths  of  winter  she 
seemed  a  figure  of  such  unassailable  safety.  The 
exuberance  of  health  rebounded  in  her  against 


The  Getting  Home  231 

everything  rigorous  without  —  waiting  there 
ready  and  impatient  for  happiness.  The  long 
sweeping  ostrich  plumes  above  her  exquisite 
head  were  the  blue  messengers  of  bright  skies. 
Richest  dark  sealskin  enveloped  her  from  throat 
to  feet,  and  from  under  it  there  came  out  upon 
the  winter  air  the  faint  odor  of  some  most  delicate 
flower.  The  mere  playfulness  of  her  feet  in 
walking  was  a  language  —  the  warm  white 
feet  in  a  kind  of  onward  dance  just  above  the 
snow. 

We  had  walked,  and  then  we  were  returning 
slowly  in  the  twilight.  It  was  the  hour  of  the 
great  Nocturne  of  the  City. 

Before  us,  as  we  threaded  our  way  along  the 
winding  snow  paths,  stretched  the  evening  land 
scape —  south  and  west:  the  white  earth  now 
in  half  shadow,  the  leafless  trees  snow-laden, 
the  darker  evergreens  bearing  the  heavier  bur 
dens  of  their  kind.  Through  these  a  yellow 
gleam  flashed  here  and  there  as  the  lamps  were 
lighted.  Along  the  edge  of  the  Park  towered 
the  great  black  buildings  beginning  to  be  fretted 
with  long  vertical  and  horizontal  lines  of  lights ; 


232  The  Heroine  in  Bronze 

and  infinitely  behind  in  the  background  the  far- 
spread  crimson  of  the  sky.  We  stopped  to  en 
joy  the  scene ;  there  it  all  was  before  us  in  one 
picture :  Nature  —  Man  —  Dusk  —  Eternity. 

As  we  reached  the  low  brow  of  one  hill  there 
advanced  toward  us  a  little  pageant  of  humility 
—  the  procession  of  Park  donkeys  on  their  way 
to  their  stables,  to  their  feed  and  their  sleep. 
No  doubt  glad  enough  to  be  on  their  way  thither, 
rough-coated,  shaggy-legged,  under-sized  cav 
alry  of  the  thoughtless.  All  day  their  backs 
had  been  as  so  many  top  fence-rails  for  gleeful 
children  to  straddle  and  bounce  up  and  down 
on:  the  monotone  of  their  lives  an  incessant 
downhill  and  uphill,  with  ever  changing  burdens, 
but  with  no  change  of  burden. 

We  stood  aside  in  the  narrow  path  to  let  the 
half-drowsy  procession  pass,  and  she  stretched 
out  her  hand  to  stroke  each  beast ;  but  when  the 
one  who  brought  up  in  the  rear,  the  meekest 
and  forlornest  and  most  imposed  upon  of  them 
all,  was  tripping  by,  she  suddenly  caught  him 
round  the  neck  and  drew  his  head  against  her 


The  Getting  Home  233 

heart  and  held  him  until  with  one  hand  she  had 
pulled  from  under  her  cloak  her  flower  and  fas 
tened  it  in  his  bridle  under  one  long  wintry  ear. 
Emotion  in  her  must  overflow,  and  it  overflowed 
on  the  donkey. 

Well  I  knew  who  the  real  donkey  in  the  case 
was. 

As  for  the  four-legged  image  of  myself  there 
in  the  snow  path,  while  this  was  going  on,  he 
threw  one  ear  forward  toward  the  stable  —  for 
disappointment;  and  one  ear  rearward  to  his 
back  —  for  submission :  experience  had  taught 
him  that  whenever  people  were  nice  to  him, 
they  meant  to  use  him ;  and  as  an  asinine  psy 
chologist  he  made  out  that  she  now  meant  to 
get  up  and  was  but  decorating  him  that  he 
might  look  the  finer  while  she  rode. 

We  finished  our  walk  in  silence. 

After  dinner  late  I  was  walking  up  the  Avenue 
on  the  way  home.  The  thoroughfare  was  brill 
iant  that  night :  the  sky  clear,  the  moon  out, 
snow  on  the  street,  with  lights  from  lamp-post 
and  doorways  and  hotel  entrances  and  shop 
windows.  It  was  possible  to  see  what  was 


234  The  Heroine  in  Bronze 

going  on  and  that  was  why  something  arrested 
my  attention  at  one  of  the  hotels  ahead  of  me. 
A  white  marble  balustrade  ran  in  front  of  it, 
and  on  this  at  intervals  stood  tubs  in  each  of 
which  grew  a  dwarfed  evergreen.  Each  of  the 
little  trees  was  well  snowed  under.  A  woman 
had  paused  with  her  face  turned  upward  toward 
the  balustrade  and  a  tiny  evergreen.  As  I 
approached  she  put  up  one  hand  and  patted  it 
as  though  it  were  a  human  head.  Her  face 
glowed  with  splendid  health  and  happiness. 
She  wore  a  hood  and  a  long  dark  cloak,  rather 
coarse  but  comfortable;  and  as  she  threw  it 
back  from  one  shoulder  to  stretch  out  her  arm, 
I  noticed  under  it  the  garb  of  a  trained  nurse. 
In  the  city  of  millions  that  winter  night,  she 
perhaps  out  on  the  street  for  short  relief  from 
hospital  and  sick,  with  warm  fresh  young  blood 
coursing  through  her  —  she  there  before  the 
little  frozen  evergreen  with  her  womanly  im 
pulse  to  nurse,  to  caress.  Did  it  bring  up 
memories,  tell  a  story?  Or  in  her,  was  it 
absence  of  memories,  a  void  in  her  heart  ? 
As  the  pastel  of  the  day  I  wrote  the  scene 


The  Getting  Home  235 

down  that  night :  I  dedicated  the  little  story 
of  the  unknown  woman  who  caressed  the  frozen 
pine  to  the  unknown  woman  who  caressed  the 
half-frozen  donkey. 

And  that  night  a  further  question  rose  within 
me.  Here  once  more  I  had  come  upon  that 
strange  dependence  of  the  human  heart  upon 
some  image  that  is  not  human :  there  was  my 
threadbare  scholar  that  summer  day,  tossing 
his  white  flower  toward  the  face  of  Shakespeare ; 
there  down  by  the  Washington  Arch  was  my 
Savoyard  host,  cultivating  about  his  dinner 
tables  artificial  grape-vines  in  memory  of  the 
shores  of  Lake  Leman ;  here  was  a  woman  on  a 
winter  night  with  thousands  around  her  reach 
ing  out  to  the  frozen  tree.  All  one  and  the 
same  thing  —  the  human  heart  trying  to  reach 
other  human  hearts  through  images  not  human. 

Now  the  question  forced  my  mind  further  on  : 
do  we  in  turn  use  the  human  as  an  image  through 
which  we  must  try  to  reach  things  above  hu 
manity  ? 

What  is  any  man's  friend  but  an  image  to 
him  through  which  he  reaches  things  more  to 


236  The  Heroine  in  Bronze 

him  than  his  friend  is  —  that  were  before  his 
friend  was,  and  that  will  be  after  his  friend  is 
gone?  What  is  a  man's  love  of  a  woman  but 
of  an  image  through  which  he  holds  steadfast 
and  true  to  what  is  more  to  him  than  she  her 
self  ?  If  my  friend  fail  in  strength,  in  loyalty, 
in  honor,  do  I  love  strength  and  loyalty  and 
honor  less  because  his  image  has  crumbled  and 
holds  them  no  more?  If  the  woman  loved 
prove  faithless  or  too  faulty,  does  not  the  lover 
turn  toward  another  woman  not  thus  marred? 

And  was  this  the  reason  why  she  must  wait 
until  she  could  be  sure  that  in  me  she  would 
find  an  image  through  which  her  nature  might 
be  released  in  its  flight  toward  more  than  I  could 
ever  be  ? 

The  year  now  drew  near  its  close,  and  my  book 
of  the  little  pageants  of  the  streets  drew  near 
its  end  also.  On  the  night  of  the  thirtieth  of 
December,  I  finished  it.  I  gathered  them  to 
gether  into  a  bundle  of  the  days  and  sat  down 
and  wrote  to  her :  — 

"The  Old  Year  goes  out  to-morrow.  To 
night  I  bring  to  a  close  a  work  which  was  begun 


The  Getting  Home  237 

when  it  came  in.  The  plan  was  that  every 
day  as  I  walked  in  this  City  of  all  life  I  should 
watch  what  was  done  before  my  eyes.  At 
night  I  was  to  run  over  the  scenes  which  stayed 
in  memory  as  worthiest  to  be  remembered  and 
out  of  these  to  choose  one  —  the  best. 

"This  plan  has  been  carried  out.  Not  without 
effort.  The  days  of  the  year  have  not  all  been 
spent  at  ease.  Some  have  been  troubled,  some 
burdened,  some  have  drawn  my  eyes  from  the 
deeds  of  others  to  the  needs  of  myself.  The 
nights  have  not  always  descended  softly  under 
their  tranquil  lights.  Some  have  had  shadows 
deeper  than  the  shadow  of  the  earth ;  some  have 
known  storms  that  raged  beyond  the  tempest 
of  the  air.  But  through  trouble  and  burden, 
through  shadow  and  through  storm,  I  have  held 
on  to  my  appointed  course:  that  each  day  I 
should  look  out  upon  the  world  about  me  for 
something  actual  and  beautiful,  and  each  night 
write  this  down  and  carry  the  strength  of  it  into 
my  sleep. 

"The  work  is  done.  I  send  it  to  you,  it  was 
meant  for  you.  As  I  from  the  end  look  back 


238  The  Heroine  in  Bronze 

to  the  start,  I  see  how  all  the  paths  of  the  days 
have  run  into  the  one  road  of  the  year.  The 
paths  met  in  the  road;  the  road  leads  to  you, 
ends  in  you. 

"It  is  my  way  of  telling  you  that  you  have 
been  part  of  everything  that  I  have  found  best 
in  the  world.  Not  one  of  these  stories  but  I 
have  claimed  for  you.  I  have  observed  no 
actor  in  any  scene  without  displacing  him  and 
saying  that  you  would  thus  have  acted. 

"It  may  be  that  I  shall  never  accomplish 
anything  great;  and  being  found  out  to  be  a 
commonplace  person,  I  shall  soon  now  be  re 
minded  to  withdraw  and  leave  you  to  look  for 
greater  things  in  some  other  man.  If  it  must 
be,  it  will  be.  And  I  shall  think  you  were 
right:  that  being  what  you  are,  you  could  not 
ask  less  of  the  man  you  are  to  love  than  that 
he  do  more  in  the  world  than  I  have  thus  far 
proved  myself  able  to  do. 

"Even  with  the  loss  of  you  I  shall  take  with 
me  one  thing  that  I  can  never  lose :  the  memory 
of  what  you  were. 

"You  will  see  that  for  one  day  of  the  year 


The  Getting  Home  239 

there  is  no  story.  Something  is  left  out.  That 
lack  you  will  have  to  fill  with  your  fancy;  you 
may  sit  and  wonder  what  little  lost  perfection 
of  the  City  was  not  found  to  tell  you  in  one  more 
way  what  I  feel.  To-morrow  that  little  per 
fection  will  be  born  —  doomed  to  wander  for 
ever  lost  because  there  was  no  one  to  guide 
it  to  your  door." 

The  next  day  I  waited  for  some  word ;  I  did 
not  even  leave  my  rooms,  lest  a  message  might 
come  in  the  meantime.  Often  standing  at  my 
windows  I  looked  out  on  the  City  —  the  far- 
spread  vista  of  roofs :  snow  slowly  drifted  down, 
they  were  all  white,  so  that  the  landscape  of  them 
suggested  a  frozen  sea  with  ridges  and  pinnacles, 
vast  crumpled  fields  of  ice  piled  in  heaps.  The 
day  ended,  twilight  darkened  over  the  vast 
scene,  the  lamps  of  New  Year's  Eve  began  to 
glimmer.  Still  not  a  word  from  her. 

Toward  eleven  o'clock  there  was  a  touch  on 
my  bell ;  a  messenger  boy,  his  cap  and  the  edges 
of  his  hair  snow-sprinkled,  his  cheeks  ruddy, 
his  eyes  dancing  with  the  merriment  of  the  night, 
handed  me  a  letter :  — 


240  The  Heroine  in  Bronze 

"When  the  parcel  arrived  last  night,  we  had 
guests.  Not  until  they  were  gone,  not  until  the 
rest  of  the  house  was  quiet,  not  even  until  the 
others  were  far  away  in  dreams  or  dreamless- 
ness  would  I  dare  begin  to  read.  All  to-day  I 
was  needed  for  things  that  no  one  else  could  do. 
But  early  to-night  I  had  myself  excused  to  the 
outside  world,  I  made  my  excuses  to  those  at 
home ;  I  have  been  reading  ever  since  and  have 
just  read  to  the  end,  and  I  am  writing  at  once 
and  I  do  not  know  what  to  say. 

"This  I  do  say  first :  that  having  written  this 
book,  you  need  have  no  doubt  of  your  future. 
To  me  henceforth  your  faith  in  yourself  is 
warranted,  more  than  justified;  you  will  live 
your  dream,  you  will  do  great  things,  you  will  go 
far  up  the  heights.  And  if,  as  I  write  these  words, 
my  tears  blot  them,  they  are  tears  of  joy,  a 
woman's  joy  in  the  triumph  of  a  man  for  whom 
she  has  planned  leadership,  rank  in  his  work. 
Here  in  this  book  is  the  proof  of  a  thing  you  have 
hoped  to  achieve  in  the  other  book ;  here  is  the 
touch  upon  life,  the  handling  of  life,  the  ideals 
of  life,  that  face  toward  immortality. 


The  Getting  Home  241 

"You  tell  me  that  you  wrote  this  book  for 
me.  I  am  unworthy  of  it;  no  one  could  be 
worthy  of  it;  it  is  a  vision  of  things  that  are 
perfect;  it  is  the  earthly  flame  of  each  day's 
deathless  sun.  It  is  not  for  me.  I  am  not  per 
fect,  my  imperfections  are  very  many  and  very 
real.  You  must  long  since  have  found  out  that 
I  am  exacting,  possibly  you  have  thought 
that  in  some  things  I  am  without  mercy  and 
without  pity.  Let  me  only  hope  that  if  I  am 
exacting,  I  never  exact  of  any  one  that  he  be 
mean,  that  he  be  petty,  that  he  be  inferior,  that 
he  be  weak,  that  he  be  false.  If  I  were  dis 
appointed  by  any  one  in  these  requirements,  I 
suppose  I  should  never  forgive.  If  a  man  should 
awaken  in  me  a  great  love  in  him,  so  that 
through  him  my  spirit  could  pass  outward  to 
life's  greater  things  —  if  he  could  not  afterwards 
meet  this  need  in  me,  I  think  I  should  be  heart 
broken. 

"No ;  this  book  is  not  drawn  from  what  I  am, 
but  from  what  you  are.  It  throws  no  light 
upon  my  nature,  but  upon  yours.  I  know  you 
now  as  I  have  never  known  you  and  could  never 


242  The  Heroine  in  Bronze 

have  known  you  in  any  other  way.  By  means 
of  these  little  stories  of  every  day  of  the  year  I 
have  gone  back  and  followed  your  road  through 
it.  I  have  tracked  the  footsteps  of  your  thought. 
I  have  followed  you  every  night  into  your 
dreams.  And  often  I  have  recalled  with  each 
story  what  I  on  that  day  was  doing.  Particu 
larly  I  have  hunted  out  the  story  you  set  down 
the  day  I  sailed.  I  have  gone  through  most  care 
fully  all  those  written  during  the  summer  while 
I  was  ill  in  Europe.  And  thus  I  have  lived 
over  your  life  throughout  the  year :  I  know  how 
my  path  ran  through  it ;  I  now  know  how  your 
path  ran  alongside  mine ;  and  how  every  day 
from  your  path  you  threw  something  over  into 
my  path. 

"But  though  this  book  is  not  for  me,  it  is  the 
call  of  a  great  silver  trumpet  to  me  from  the 
heights.  Your  faith  in  me  turns  my  face  up 
ward.  It  must  be  true  that  love  sees  best, 
truest,  most ;  it  is  not  blind.  And  if  your  love 
of  me  has  seen  these  things  in  me,  I  can  but 
hope  that  not  all  is  a  mistake.  You  may  smile ; 
but  if  hereafter  you  should  ever  come  to  believe 


The  Getting  Home  243 

that  any  one  of  these  things  was  not  true  of  me, 
I  fear  I  should  think  that  you  had  grown 
unjust. 

"Thus  your  offering  makes  me  new  to  myself. 
I  see  the  city  in  which  I  have  lived  all  my  lif  e  as 
never  before :  the  streets  are  new  streets,  the 
pageants  are  new  pageants,  my  eyes  are  opened 
to  what  is  going  on  around  me.  Never  hereafter 
shall  I  walk  in  it  without  trying  to  find  stories. 
A  new  year,  a  new  city,  a  new  life,  a  new  book  of 
life. 

"  Once  I  told  you  that  you  gave  me  the  greatest 
shock  of  my  experience  —  that  the  world  would 
use  me  if  it  could.  That  is  the  shock  of  girlhood. 
And  that  was  less  than  a  year  ago.  But  changes 
have  taken  place  in  me  very  rapidly :  and  now  I 
am  already  enough  a  woman  to  understand  the 
great  shock  to  a  woman  —  that  the  world  will 
not  have  her.  The  tragedy  to  a  woman  — 
that  the  world,  looking  for  all  that  it  may  use, 
looks  at  her  and  looks  away.  I  begin  to  feel 
something  of  that  tragedy  —  that  possibly  I 
may  live  unused.  If  I  can  ever  be  a  help  to 
you  in  your  work,  may  I?  Do  not  tell  the 


244  The  Heroine  in  Bronze 

woman  who  cares  for  you  that  she  can  be  of  no 
service/ 

"And  one  thing  I  ask  —  even  beyond  the  book 
you  have  sent  me.  Perfect  as  I  think  it,  I  yet 
leave  it  to  go  in  search  of  the  imperfect  one 
which  you  fear  will  be  a  failure.  From  what  is 
safe  my  heart  goes  out  to  what  is  in  peril.  My 
faith  in  you  now  is  such  that  I  expect  you  to  do 
more  than  succeed ;  you  will  wrest  victory  out  of 
failure,  and  that  is  the  noblest  success  a  man 
can  win.  Now  more  impatiently  than  ever  I 
shall  watch  for  the  end  of  the  other  book." 

I  stood  at  my  windows  looking  out  on  the 
crumpled  sea  of  white  roofs:  Far  southward 
through  the  snow-misty  air  I  saw  the  pale  gold 
of  the  great  clock  dial:  the  hands  were  point 
ing  toward  twelve.  And  now  all  around  the 
horizon,  from  East  River  and  North  River, 
from  the  shores  beyond,  from  the  Bay,  from 
every  point  within  the  city,  faint  and  far  and 
softened  by  the  snow  came  the  melodies  of 
chimes  and  of  horns  —  the  music  of  the  New 
Year  Morn.  Voices  of  all  nations  blent  in  one 


The  Getting  Home  245 

greeting  to  the  city.    All  the  tongues  of  men  in 
one  tongue  of  humanity. 

I  a  new  creature  with  them  —  made  new  by 
her !  Her  voice  was  the  first  that  reached  me 
from  the  human  race  with  faith  in  what  I  could 
do.  And  with  her  faith  now  won  for  my  work, 
closer  about  me  I  felt  the  approach  of  her  love. 


CHAPTER  III 

'INTER,  rough-booted,  gray-haired, 
gray-cloaked,  and  snarlish  Shep 
herd,  had  gone  northward  beating 
sullenly  down  before  him  his  bars 
of  icicles  and  driving  onward  his 
disorderly  flock  of  dark-fleeced  clouds.  Spring, 
barefoot  amid  young  grass  and  young  dews,  had 
tripped  by,  trailing  her  fingers  across  sad  boughs 
and  bringing  forth  from  them  the  quick  merri 
ment  of  blossoms.  And  now  Summer  of  the 
sweet  breath  and  the  sweet  breast  and  quiet 
sandals  had  come  to  revisit  her  matured  and 
gorgeous  realm. 

June,  the  fateful  month  to  me,  had  already 
sent  one  of  its  bright  weeks  away  into  the  past ; 
and  on  a  fateful  night  of  the  second  week  I  was 
to  write  to  the  end  of  the  story  and  terminate 
the  uncertainties  of  its  young  pair  of  lovers. 
And  the  end  also  would  bring  to  a  conclusion, 
246 


The  Getting  Home  247 

either  tragical  or  happy,  the  misgivings  of  its 
author  toward  her  who,  for  some  mysterious 
reason  known  only  to  herself,  had  decreed  that 
upon  the  finished  work  she  would  base  her 
decision  to  wed  or  not  to  wed  him.  There  had 
long  been  a  tacit  understanding  between  us  now 
that  when  I  read  her  the  final  pages,  she  was  to 
make  known  her  acceptance  or  her  rejection  of 
me.  And  whether  at  the  last  moment  she  would 
be  prepared  to  do  this,  my  own  will  was  fixed. 
I  meant  to  say  to  her :  — 

"You  have  all  along  declared  that  this  story 
would  somehow  furnish  you  with  the  key  to  my 
character.  Has  it  done  so?  Whether  or  not 
this  be  true,  I  have  waited  long  and  I  will  wait 
no  longer." 

I  could  have  wished  that  the  end  of  the  story 
were  otherwise.  Books  without  intention  judge 
their  readers ;  they  are  for  them  or  against  them ; 
they  uphold  them  or  condemn  them.  And  this 
story  at  its  finish  would  almost  have  the  force 
and  directness  of  an  arraignment  of  her  for  her 
treatment  of  me,  an  assault  upon  certain  traits 
of  her  character  which  she  regarded  as  the  bul- 


248  The  Heroine  in  Bronze 

warks  of  her  safety.  The  heroine  of  the  book 
at  the  very  end  revealed  herself  as  all  that  she, 
Muriel  Dunstan,  was  not.  When  love  came 
to  her  in  her  girlhood,  she  welcomed  it  as  some 
thing  she  must  not  question;  to  her  nature  if 
love  could  not  be  trusted,  nothing  could  be 
trusted;  and  in  simple  faith  she  had  quickly 
yielded  herself  without  a  plan  for  the  future  or 
doubt  of  him  she  loved.  Thus  when  I  came  to 
read  the  final  chapter,  it  would  be  invested  with 
the  brutality  of  an  indictment. 

Now,  if  love  be  anything  that  can  be  named, 
it  is  gentleness.  Almost  it  is  enough  for  any 
one  to  say  to  any  one  else  :  "I  love  you  because 
I  believe  that  your  love  will  always  make  you 
gentle  with  me."  And  I  know  that  my  whole 
nature  toward  her  was  one  worship  of  gentleness. 
Yet  I  was  thus  forced  by  my  work  into  a  posi 
tion  of  antagonism,  most  ill-timed,  most  un 
fortunate,  perhaps  most  disastrous.  It  would 
almost  be  requiring  too  much  of  her  that  she 
should  not  be  wounded  at  such  a  moment  — 
that  I  should  ask  from  her  the  confession  of 
her  love  of  me  at  the  very  instant  in  which  I 


The  Getting  Home  249 

was  stamping  my  disapproval  upon  the  ele 
ments  of  her  being.  And  thus  at  the  end  of  the 
book  came  the  greatest  battle  of  all  its  many 
battles.  Surely  the  work  ought  to  have  been 
of  life  since  it  had  been  as  turbulent  as  reality 
itself.  With  a  kind  of  grim  humor  as  I  looked 
back  over  its  progress,  I  marvelled  that  so  many 
different  kinds  of  trouble  could  arise  from  the 
same  thing. 

It  is  right  that  we  should  wring  from  our 
purses  the  uttermost  farthing  for  life's  greatest 
occasions.  A  thousand  inconsiderable  hours 
are  but  the  servants  of  the  few  masterful  ones 
which  give  to  a  career  and  character  its  whole 
higher  meaning.  Perhaps  with  this  in  mind 
I  had  ordered  for  myself  that  evening  a  most 
rich  and  lavish  dinner ;  when  placed  before  me, 
it  was  pushed  away  uneaten.  Coming  home, 
I  had  thought  to  find  solace  through  another 
sense  and  had  drawn  upon  some  very  rare  and 
fragrant  tobacco.  Filling  my  pipe,  I  took  my 
seat  for  the  usual  quiet  hour  before  beginning 
work.  And  by  this  time  you  must  be  well 
aware  that  the  seat  in  question  was  at  my  win- 


250  The  Heroine  in  Bronze 

dows  opening  toward  the  west  and  south,  with 
the  vast  scene  of  the  city  below  and  the  vaster 
scene  of  the  twilight  sky  arched  above.  But 
whether  the  Evening  Star  and  the  New  Moon 
were  together  in  the  clear  welkin  or  were  shut 
away  from  mortal  ken  by  cloud  I  do  not  know. 
Nor  how  long  I  sat  there  do  I  know.  When 
consciousness  of  time  and  place  and  circumstance 
returned  to  me,  my  rooms  were  in  darkness  and 
my  pipe  cold  in  my  hand.  It  may  have  gone 
out  quickly ;  it  may  never  have  been  lighted. 

I  got  up,  and  groping  my  way  to  my  writing 
desk,  lighted  my  lamp.  And  for  a  while  I  sat 
there  with  a  certain  overwhelming  realization 
of  the  mystery  and  power  of  the  uttered  word. 
There  before  me  were  a  few  drops  of  ink  and  a 
pen  point  and  a  sheet  of  white  paper,  and  with  a 
few  movements  of  the  fingers  one  —  some  of 
the  earth's  great  ones  —  could  trace  backward 
and  forward  a  few  simple  markings  that  would 
bow  many  a  head  in  tears,  send  laughter  into 
a  million  hearts,  and  in  a  moment's  writing 
leave  his  name  writ  for  ages.  That  was  not  for 
me;  but  what  was  for  me  was  the  certainty 


The  Getting  Home  251 

that  my  words  would  go  straight  to  one  heart 
and  there  be  poisoned  arrows  or  the  wings  of 
faith. 

How  serene  and  clear  the  lamplight  fell  on 
my  paper  !  I  glanced  up  at  the  little  statue  of 
bronze.  To  my  imagination  her  whole  figure 
seemed  conscious  of  the  battle  about  to  begin; 
it  quivered  with  eagerness;  all  the  features 
were  tense  with  excitement ;  but  the  smile 
could  not  conceal  lines  of  anxiety;  under  the 
eyes  were  shadows  of  solicitude. 

My  mind  ranged  backward  to  old  ages  when 
on  the  eve  of  great  events  images  took  part; 
statues  gave  a  sign;  marble  dripped  with  the 
sweat  of  agony;  bronze  oozed  with  the  blood 
of  suffering ;  on  some  altar  the  figure  of  a  saint 
beckoned  or  waved  off ;  at  some  shrine  the  eyes 
of  a  divinity  were  seen  to  move  to  the  right  or 
to  the  left. 

I  asked  for  no  miracle  in  my  realistic  lodgings. 
Always  I  had  felt  that  were  I  a  taker  of  snuff, 
I  should  take  snuff  to  make  me  honestly  sneeze, 
and  not  snuff  that  would  lead  me  to  wink  even 
at  miracles.  On  the  eve  of  my  battle  my  statue 


252  The  Heroine  in  Bronze 

gave  no  sign  that  was  superhuman.  Only  the 
signs  that  were  human.  And  I  asked  of  it  noth 
ing  more  heavenly  than  innocence,  more  angelic 
than  trust,  more  immortal  than  constancy. 

I  set  to  work.  It  must  have  been  toward 
midnight  that  I  was  impelled  to  lay  down  my 
pen  and  look  at  my  own  hand  in  wonderment 
that  it  could  write  words  so  brutal  —  so  bru 
tally  true.  I  got  up  and  walked  the  floor. 
Could  not  the  end  be  softened,  be  changed? 
Must  I  go  to  her  on  a  mission  of  life's  concord, 
bearing  a  missile  of  life's  war?  How  could  it 
be  that  a  mere  creature  of  my  own  imagination 
—  a  girl  in  a  book  —  should  have  such  authority 
that  I  myself  had  no  right  to  change  her? 
Must  a  mere  fancy  mar  life's  greatest  plan? 
Long  I  walked  the  floor;  then  coming  back  to 
my  work  I  wrote  it  down  as  it  had  to  be,  as  a 
mason  hews  his  block  to  the  straight  line,  as 
the  stonecutter  drives  his  chisel  into  granite. 

It  was  done.  I  leaned  back  in  my  chair. 
The  hour  must  have  been  long  past  midnight. 
.1  suddenly  became  aware  that  the  light  around 
me  and  before  me  was  gradually  dying  out. 


The  Getting  Home  253 

I  looked  up  at  the  little  figure  of  bronze.  Her 
lamp  was  empty;  the  last  drops  of  oil  in  the 
bowl  had  already  passed  into  the  wick  and  were 
being  drawn  toward  the  flame.  Lower  and 
lower  sank  the  final  radiance.  I  bent  quickly 
forward  and  fixed  my  eyes  on  the  shadowy 
features  of  that  patient  keeper  of  my  light. 
The  marks  of  the  struggle  through  which  she 
had  passed  told  on  her;  she  looked  weary; 
she  asked  to  be  released.  In  the  words  of 
Renan  when  his  own  end  drew  near  she  seemed 
to  say :  — 

"I  have  earned  my  rest." 

"Then  you  shall  rest!"  I  murmured  within 
myself.  "Never  again  shall  your  light  be 
kindled  for  any  other  labor." 

The  bluish  ghost  of  flame  on  the  wick  went 
out,  leaving  the  room  in  darkness.  Groping 
my  way  to  my  bedside,  I  lighted  my  candle, 
and  returning  with  it  to  the  desk,  set  it  on  one 
side  near  the  darkened  statuette.  Then  I  went 
to  a  drawer  and  took  out  the  white  scarf  she 
had  left  with  me  that  morning  of  farewell. 
Shaking  this  softly  out,  I  returned  with  it  and 


254  The  Heroine  in  Bronze 

seated  myself  at  the  desk,  with  my  eyes  on  the 
bronze :  — 

"Spirit  of  my  Lamp,  your  vigils  are  over! 
Guest  of  constancy  and  sweetness,  of  grace  and 
light,  you  did  your  part !  And  now,  protectress 
of  my  thoughts,  nymph  of  the  heart's  clear  run, 
warrior  maid  of  the  spirit's  battle,  steady  bea 
con  beside  imagination's  uncharted  sea,  narcissus 
flower  that  never  drooped  for  drought,  farewell  ! 
If  the  elements  of  which  thou  are  wrought 
allow  thee  any  share  in  the  balm  of  sleep,  then 
sleep  thou  thus,  wrapt  in  the  snows  of  purity." 

I  lifted  the  statue  from  her  pedestal  and  began 
softly  to  wind  the  scarf  about  her.  I  began 
at  the  feet  and  wound  upward  around  the  waist, 
up  to  the  shoulders,  about  the  neck,  across  the 
lips  until  only  the  eyes  were  visible.  Bending 
over  and  looking  into  these,  I  said :  — 

"Farewell!" 

I  drew  the  mists  of  oblivion  across  her  eyes 
and  wove  the  frost  of  forgetfulness  about  her 
head  till  she  was  seen  no  more. 

I  awoke  next  morning  as  the  east  was  begin 
ning  to  flush  rose  color  with  the  dawn,  and  as 


The  Getting  Home  255 

the  light  streamed  into  my  room,  I  remembered 
how  upon  such  a  morning  about  a  year  before 
I  had  awakened  with  my  first  thought  of  the 
story;  how  I  had  hurried  across  the  city  to 
announce  it  to  her.  Now  on  the  afternoon  of 
this  day  I  was  to  go  to  her  and  read  the  end. 

It  was  another  masterpiece  of  a  day  —  nature 
is  prodigal  of  masterworks.  Out  on  the  ocean 
blue  waves  were  dancing;  inland  from  the 
ocean  ran  the  clean  Hudson  toward  its  mountains, 
capped  with  blue  waves.  That  day  steamers 
would  be  leaving  for  Europe,  yachts  would 
spread  their  snowy  sail  on  the  river. 

June  !  —  the  month  of  the  colleges,  the  month 
of  the  nation's  youth  !  all  over  the  land  between 
its  two  oceans,  from  palmetto  to  pine,  the  col 
leges  were  making  ready  for  their  closing  exer 
cises.  Wherever  in  city  or  town  or  in  rural 
seclusion  there  was  one,  eager  preparations 
were  going  forward  for  Commencement  Day  — 
that  day  when  the  army  of  the  young  would 
be  turned  out  into  the  vaster  army  of  the  old, 
to  mingle  with  them,  to  work  with  them,  to 
fight  against  them;  to  find  out  each  other,  to 


256  The  Heroine  in  Bronze 

combine  to  make  a  new  world,  a  new  nation. 
And  from  thousands  and  thousands  and  thou 
sands  of  homes  all  over  the  Republic  how  many 
thoughts  turned  toward  these  colleges !  with 
what  hopes,  prayers,  solicitudes,  prides !  All 
the  future  would  on  that  day  center  about  one 
figure  —  the  vestal  of  the  college.  Somehow 
the  destinies  of  the  land,  its  strength,  its  might, 
its  power,  announced  themselves  as  dependent 
upon  her  with  all  her  frailty :  what  she  was,  the 
nation  was ;  what  she  would  be,  the  nation  would 
be.  Unless  she  were  high,  it  would  never  be 
high;  it  could  never  rise  beyond  her  elevation. 

It  was  the  Nation's  Month  of  the  Vestal  and 
the  Rose. 

All  day  I  remained  in  my  rooms,  touching  and 
retouching  the  last  pages.  As  the  day  waned  I 
left  my  apartments,  descended  to  the  street, 
and  started  across  the  city.  As  I  moved  among 
thousands,  an  ordinary  unnoticeable  passer, 
giving  no  sign  of  the  tragedy  within  me,  I  could 
but  think  that  brushing  against  my  shoulder 
perhaps  were  others  as  ordinary,  as  unnotice 
able,  who  as  successfully  hid  their  tragedies. 


The  Getting  Home  257 

From  beside  me  another  youth's  story  may 
have  started  on  a  journey  that  led  him  to  blue- 
based,  purple-aired  Capri;  another's  may  have 
journeyed  to  the  Cedars  of  Lebanon ;  another's 
may  have  found  its  perfume  in  the  Desert  of 
Arabia. 

The  sun  was  low  when  I  reached  the  house. 
The  house  was  very  quiet.  I  was  received 
with  the  air  that  no  one  else  was  to  be  admitted. 
I  went  through  the  hall  to  the  veranda,  and 
stepping  out  saw  her  across  the  garden.  The 
yard  was  already  in  half  shadow.  As  if  instinc 
tively,  she  had  taken  refuge  in  that  nook  of  the 
wall  where  the  marble  seat  was  and  the  ivy  and 
the  rose  bush  now  in  full  bloom.  There  it  was 
that  I  had  announced  to  her  tidings  from  my 
masterwork ;  it  was  no  masterwork  now. 

As  I  walked  toward  her,  she  rose  and  awaited 
me  with  I  know  not  what  marvellous  blending  of 
her  girlhood  and  her  womanliness.  Both  were 
speaking  in  her  eyes,  both  were  speaking  to  me, 
both  said :  — 

"Be  gentle  with  me!" 

But  we  greeted  each  other,  I  think,  without 


258  The  Heroine  in  Bronze 

a  word.  Of  that  I  am  not  positive.  I  do  not 
know  what  took  place,  what  we  said,  how  we 
acted.  I  do  remember  that  before  I  began  to 
read  some  effort  was  made  to  warn  her :  — 

"There  are  things  here  you  will  not  like. 
They  will  hurt  you,  they  may  offend  you.  I 
am  sorry  they  had  to  be  thus." 

She  bent  her  head  in  acquiescence  as  though 
she  already  knew  what  to  expect. 

No  sooner  had  I  begun  to  read  than  I  grew 
calm.  Trepidation  is  for  life's  lesser  things. 
Facing  the  inevitable,  the  final,  it  is  easy  to  be 
calm.  But  I  think  this  very  quietness  in  me 
increased  her  emotion.  There  was  little  out 
ward  sign.  The  stillness  of  the  marble  was 
scarcely  more  absolute  than  hers.  Emotion 
expressed  itself  only  in  her  hands,  the  dumb 
tragedy  of  the  hands. 

I  finished.  She  sat  in  silence,  I  waited  in 
silence.  Then  I  turned  to  her  :  — 

"That  is  the  end  of  it  all.  And  now  I  have 
waited  long.  I  will  wait  no  longer.  You  must 
decide." 

She  did  not  reply,  and  I  turned  from  her.     Her 


The  Getting  Home  259 

light  touch  was  on  my  arm.  With  a  long,  quiver 
ing  breath  she  bent  away  from  me  toward  the 
rose  bush  and  began  to  search  it  over,  looking 
among  its  blossoms  for  one  that  responded  to 
her  mood  and  meaning.  Her  eyes  at  last  found 
one,  and  with  a  sign  in  them  to  me  she  drew 
my  attention  to  it ;  it  was  half  opened,  flawless. 
At  sunrise  it  had  been  a  bud,  to-morrow  it  would 
be  a  full  rose.  With  her  whole  attention  turned 
to  it  she  said :  — 

" Break  it!" 

Thinking  that  she  wished  to  avoid  the  thorns, 
I  got  up  and  broke  it  off,  and  returning  to  my 
seat,  handed  it  to  her.  With  her  eyes  fixed  on 
it  she  shook  her  head,  declining  to  receive  it :  — 

"Tear  it  to  pieces!" 

I  looked  at  her,  at  a  loss  to  understand  a 
request  so  idle,  whimsical,  grotesque.  It  was 
too  small  a  thing  for  me  to  do.  She  repeated 
her  words  with  sad  intensity :  — 

"Tear  it  to  pieces!" 

I  now  discovered  that  there  was  that  in  her 
mood  and  meaning  which  was  grave  and  sacred 
to  her;  and  awkwardly,  unwillingly  I  acted 


260  The  Heroine  in  Bronze 

the  part  she  imposed  upon  me  ;  the  petals  lay 
strewn  on  the  ground  before  us.  She  leaned 
over  and  looked  down  at  them  with  that  same 
expression  of  mystical  sincerity  which  often 
came  to  her  face  :  — 

"Grind  them  back  into  the  dust !" 

I  would  not.  She  repeated  her  words  almost 
as  a  prayer : — 

"Crush  them  back  into  the  earth  !" 

I  did  so.  I  had  come  to  realize  that  her  na 
ture  at  that  moment  had  need  to  face  life's 
possible  cruelty,  swift  pathos,  irretrievable 
ruin. 

For  a  while  she  looked  down  upon  the  ruin. 
Then  as  if  withdrawing  herself  from  such  a 
scene,  as  if  the  symbol  had  sufficed,  and  she 
could  now  turn  from  it  to  safety  she  said  in  a 
voice  that  seemed  to  put  an  end  to  a  long  un 
certain  story :  — 

"Put  your  hands  together." 

I  placed  palm  against  palm. 

She  pressed  together  her  own  palms  and  laid 
them  between  mine  —  surrendered.  And  the 
whole  stem  of  her  delicate  life  now  too  storm- 


The  Getting  Home  261 

shaken  to  stand  alone,  her  head  sank  lower 
until  it  touched  my  shoulder  —  there  to  rest: 
there  her  eyes  were  hidden. 

11  Muriel!" 

"Donald!" 

A  low,  long-famished  cry  to  her  and  locked 
embraced. 

But  what  to  her  signified  the  destruction  of 
the  rose  has  always  been  her  secret.  Many 
mysteries  in  herself  I  have  never  sought  to 
probe.  Sometimes  I  thought  that  it  was  her 
comment  on  the  fate  of  the  heroine  of  the  story ; 
that  she,  too  trustful,  had  been  broken  from 
the  parent  stem,  torn  to  pieces  by  life's  vio 
lence  and  scattered  by  storm.  Sometimes  it 
has  rather  seemed  that  she  was  thinking  not  of 
the  heroine  of  the  story,  but  of  girlhood  itself  — 
girlhood  that  is  radiant  for  its  brief  day  and  ends 
with  marriage.  The  sun  goes  down,  and  it  sur 
renders  itself  to  love  as  the  only  guide,  to  enter 
darkness  with  it  in  search  of  happiness  and  in 
hope  of  a  morning  light. 


262  The  Heroine  in  Bronze 

This,  then,  is  a  plodding  narrative  of  how  an 
imagined  masterwork  by  a  youth  turned  out  to 
be  no  masterwork  at  all,  and  how  its  author 
passed  from  a  state  of  grace  to  a  state  of  gra- 
ciousness. 

The  book  was  brought  out  that  autumn  under 
the  title  of  In  Years  Gone  By.  More  appro 
priately  the  title  might  have  been  In  Ears  Gone 
By;  for  while  it  came  into  existence,  the  main 
fact  in  the  life  of  its  author  was  the  possession 
of  a  pair  of  terrified  ears :  terrified  by  what  she 
said  and  much  more  terrified  by  what  she  re 
fused  to  say;  so  that  when  finally  he  ceased 
to  hear  the  one  and  began  to  hear  the  other,  it 
was  as  though  his  own  ears  also  were  by-gone 
and  a  new  set  of  auriculars  had  emerged  to  equip 
his  domelike  and  much-relieved  laboratory. 

However  this  may  be,  the  book  was  brought 
out,  and  the  publishers,  by  the  practice 
of  those  black  arts  of  which  they  are  such 
masters,  persuaded  the  world  to  try  me  again, 
and  the  world  having  tried  me  again,  decided 
that  while  the  story  was  not  just  what  it  wanted, 
neither  was  it  just  what  it  did  not  want.  But 


The  Getting  Home  263 

already  it  had  become  a  hope  of  mine  some  day 
to  write  a  book  which,  by  day  while  not  reading 
it,  would  so  bedevil  a  man  with  the  delusion 
that  it  was  interesting,  and  by  night  when  he 
was  reading  it  so  deaden  him  with  the  certainty 
of  its  being  dull,  that  it  would  thus  serve  two 
useful  ends:  to  hurry  its  reader  into  slumber 
when  he  should  be  asleep  and  help  him  to  stay 
awake  when  he  must  keep  his  eyes  open.  I 
seemed  to  have  succeeded  sooner  than  I  had 
hoped.  But  however  that  may  be  again,  out 
of  a  widespread  uncertainty  of  mind  in  the 
reading  public  I  reaped  my  harvest  from  a 
field  where  all  those  who  bought  were  wheat 
and  all  those  who  did  not  buy  were  tares :  and 
how  I  did  lament  the  tares !  They  were  so 
needlessly  numerous. 

And  thus  to  the  amazement  of  both  my  pub 
lisher  and  myself  each  of  us  did  well  hi  point  of 
avarice,  though  I  still  think  the  world  did  better 
in  the  matter  of  generosity.  And  all  this  was 
so  astounding  to  my  friends  likewise  that  they 
could  scarcely  credit  their  own  congratulations; 
whereupon  one  midwinter  night,  when  there 


264  The  Heroine  in  Bronze 

was  snow  on  all  roofs,  my  ugly  mugs  and 
dishes  came  down  from  the  shelf  with  a  clatter 
and  a  rattle ;  and  a  Welsh  rabbit  party  was 
uproariously  given  by  way  of  demonstration 
that  the  host  was  himself  no  literary  rabbit. 
But  my  friends  are  like  every  other  man's 
friends :  if  you  succeed,  they  come  and  declare 
that  it  was  what  they  always  foresaw;  and  if 
you  fail,  they  go  to  one  another  and  whisper  that 
it  was  what  they  long  expected. 

The  first  week  in  January,  one  day  an  office 
boy  appeared  at  my  door  —  actually  !  —  with 
the  publisher's  note  of  felicitation,  and  with  his 
check  which  ran  toward  many  thousands  and 
really  ran  past  a  few  of  them.  When  the  boy 
was  gone  and  the  check  had  been  judiciously 
scrutinized,  forthwith  I  got  out  my  gold-plated 
card  receiver  and  with  great  pompous  show  of 
being  both  myself  and  my  own  butler,  I  bore 
it  toward  the  author  seated  at  his  desk  as  though 
it  were  a  peacock  roasted  in  its  feathers  of  blue 
and  green  and  gold :  blue  for  the  heaven  and 
green  for  the  earth  and  gold  for  treasure.  Then 
I  clapped  on  my  hat  and  hurried  down-town  and 


The  Getting  Home  265 

thrust  the  check  under  the  grating  of  that  little 
wicket  where  the  paying  teller,  my  old  financial 
foe,  stood  cynical  and  adverse.  He  received 
it  with  his  prearranged  scorn  and  scanned  it 
with  contumely ;  but  then  glanced  up  and  bade 
me  a  civil,  commercial  good  morning  —  the 
only  morning  as  respects  me  that  had  ever 
seemed  good  to  him. 

I  returned  to  my  apartment,  and  summoning 
the  superintendent,  I  leased  one  of  the  large 
marriageable  apartments  at  the  front  of  the 
building;  and  thus  by  a  process  of  both  con 
tracting  and  expanding,  I  passed  from  the  house 
of  commons  to  the  house  of  lords. 

In  June  we  were  married. 

For  the  wedding  journey  she  said  she  would 
like  to  go  to  my  country,  and  thither  we  went 
and  saw  it  when  it  is  loveliest.  She  insisted 
upon  seeing  the  place  where  I  was  born,  where 
I  had  been  "a  little  fellow";  and  she  must  be 
driven  to  a  certain  spot  where  once  had  been  a 
fence  and  blackberry  bushes.  It  was  all  changed 
now :  no  fence,  no  bushes,  no  little  fellow,  only 
the  same  sunlight.  No  inducements  availed 


266  The  Heroine  in  Bronze 

with  her  to  be  driven  to  that  great  lawn  and 
forest  where  the  other  "little  fellow"  lived 
still  —  though  not  there  now  and  actually  at 
that  time  in  Europe  on  her  own  wedding  jour 
ney.  "I  do  not  wish  to  see  it,"  she  said,  "not 
her  nor  anything  that  is  hers."  As  we  started 
northward  again  and  had  reached  the  boundary, 
she  looked  from  the  car  window  a  long  time  at 
the  disappearing  landscape  :  — 

"Never  again  !  I  wish  it  to  be  always  on  the 
dim  border  of  my  thoughts.  After  all,  you  did 
come  out  of  my  land  of  dreams." 

In  the  autumn  she  came  to  live  with  me  in 
the  married  apartment,  and  I  turned  over  to 
her  my  family  plate,  whereat  she  greatly 
marveled. 

And  soon  thereafter  I  set  about  the  writing 
—  of  my  first  masterpiece  !  With  her  as  my 
counselor  I  place  no  bounds  to  what  that  work 
may  become.  If  I  did  well  without  her  and 
despite  her,  surely  with  her  aid  I  shall  work 
some  of  those  wonders  which  sometimes  strangely 
emanate  from  authors  who  have  wives.  So 
that  she  seems  likely  to  be  one  of  the  most 


The  Getting  Borne  267 

celebrated  of  uncelebrated  women  —  the  spouse 
of  a  genius  :  if  Nature  had  only  made  him  one. 

Our  lives  were  united,  aside  from  literary 
masterpieces,  as  compactly  as  half  a  splendid 
red  winter  apple  is  joined  to  the  other  half  of 
the  apple. 

And  now  before  the  Shears  of  Silence  clip  the 
threads  which  have  woven  this  piece  of  life's 
tapestry  and  are  near  the  margin  of  the  canvas, 
let  the  shuttle  be  cast  to  and  fro  a  little  longer  to 
depict  one  final  scene  —  that  the  last  radiance 
of  the  whole  picture  may  be  left  to  rest  on  her. 

One  cool  twilight  of  last  summer  we  walked 
out  on  the  veranda  and  down  into  the  yard. 
The  heir  of  the  house — and  heir  of  my  royalties 
—  was  already  out  there  in  the  twilight.  His 
nurse  occupied  the  marble  seat, — nurses  sooner 
or  later  always  get  the  best  seats  out  of  doors,  - 
and  she  was  slowly  pushing  to  and  fro  the  small, 
white,  silken  barge  on  which  the  heir  slept; 
he  being  still  at  the  head  waters  of  the  River  of 
Time.  I  feel  some  hesitancy  in  thus  referring 
to  him  as  heir  to  my  royalties  for  the  reason 


268  The  Heroine  in  Bronze 

that  the  servants  of  that  narrow-minded,  big 
oted  household  uniformly  speak  of  him  and 
rejoice  in  him  as  the  Commodore's  grandson. 
To  them  I  am  that  strange  being  they  call  The 
Writer ;  and  as  to  what  this  may  comprise  they 
are  most  uncertain,  the  butler  once  on  the  eve 
of  an  election  having  asked  me  whether  I  had 
a  vote.  As  for  my  paternal  activities  I  am  to 
them  merely  the  negligible  means  in  the  hands 
of  Providence  by  which  the  progeny  of  the 
Commodore  are  to  be  made  to  appear  on  the 
earth  and  celebrate  the  existence  of  their  grand 
father. 

As  we  drew  near,  the  nurse  yielded  the  nook 
to  us  and  started  across  the  yard,  the  little, 
white,  silken  barge  beginning  to  flutter  softly 
like  some  enormous  moth.  We  halted  it  and 
stood  one  on  each  side.  I  do  not  know  what 
was  in  his  mother's  mind,  what  his  father  was 
thinking  how  perilously  near  he  several  times 
had  come  to  never  being  born ;  how  a  word 
more  than  once  had  nearly  pushed  him  back 
from  the  created  universe;  how  one  of  his 
mother's  zephyrlike  sighs  or  one  of  his  father's 


The  Getting  Home  269 

groans  audible  in  any  adjoining  apartment  was 
well-nigh  a  veto  on  his  existence. 

How  many  after  a  few  years  of  marriage 
still  cherish  against  each  other  some  grievance 
which  belonged  to  the  quarrels  of  their  court 
ship,  who  secretly  revolve  some  mystery  in  the 
character  of  each  other  which  later  acquaint 
anceship  has  not  cleared  away.  In  too  many 
cases  possibly  such  grievances,  such  mysteries, 
create  their  later  tragedies.  Certainly  it  must 
be  true  that  such  grievances  dislike  to  come  out, 
but,  then,  they  dislike  to  stay  in ;  and  so  there  is 
irritation  because  they  cannot  do  both  and  are 
of  a  mind  to  do  neither :  until  some  unexpected 
moment  arrives  and  then  —  the  exposure,  the 
explosion. 

We  sat  awhile  in  silence:  I  smoked,  she  did 
nothing  —  that  last  test  of  the  perfect  happi 
ness  of  two  people  with  one  another.  Young 
wife,  young  mother,  maturing  woman,  she  sat 
there  enthroned  in  peace,  draped  in  the  security 
of  her  life.  And  once  as  I  glanced  at  her,  I 
craved  for  myself  that  absolute  rest  of  mind 
also  :  and  then  all  at  once  an  old  grievance  rolled 
out:  — 


270  The  Heroine  in  Bronze 

"What  was  the  mystery  about  the  book? 
You  said  repeatedly  that  it  would  be  a  test; 
that  when  it  was  finished,  you  would  know  me 
better.  How  was  it  a  test?  How  through  it 
did  you  know  me  better?" 

A  smile  such  as  I  had  never  seen  came  out 
upon  her  face.  It  was  as  though  something 
long  awaited  had  arrived  at  last : — 

"You  have  kept  that  to  yourself  a  long  time. 
How  can  a  woman  answer  a  question  that  has 
never  been  asked  ?  If  you  had  inquired  sooner, 
you  might  have  understood  sooner.  And  then 
how  can  one  force  the  attention  of  a  man  upon 
himself ;  and  all  this  will  compel  you  to  employ 
your  thoughts  upon  yourself." 

While  I  waited  for  her  to  begin  her  story 
I  could  but  notice  with  how  deep  a  pleasure  it 
was  going  to  be  told ;  whenever  anything  filled 
her  with  pleasure,  she  seemed  to  glow  as  though 
lighted  from  within  —  a  lamp  of  alabaster  trans 
lucent  with  white  spiritual  flame : — 

"One  morning  you  came  to  me  and  told  me 
a  wonderful  story  of  your  first  masterwork. 
The  subject  offended  me.  As  far  as  you  could 


The  Getting  Home  271 

foresee,  if  you  wrote  it,  I  would  give  you  up. 
Virtually  I  told  you  at  once  to  choose  between 
me  and  the  story.  You  stood  by  the  story. 
If  you  had  given  up  the  story  for  me,  I  might 
have  been  gratified  at  the  moment,  but  after 
wards  I  would  never  have  had  anything  more 
to  do  with  you.  A  man's  work  —  not  work  that 
is  forced  on  him,  but  the  work  that  he  deliber 
ately  chooses  to  do  —  must  be  first  with  him 
because  his  chosen  work  is  his  character.  A 
man's  love  of  a  woman  is  not  his  character. 
Love  of  women  comes  to  men  of  all  characters ; 
but  a  man's  ideal  work  is  himself,  and  if  a  man 
be  false  to  that,  then  he  can  be  false  to  anything. 
Falseness  is  falseness;  if  you  are  false  at  all, 
you  may  be  false  all  through.  That  was  the 
test  at  the  outset.  If  you  had  sacrificed  your 
work  for  me,  then  afterwards  you  might  have 
sacrificed  me  for  something  else.  If  you  had 
sacrificed  your  work,  you  would  have  sacrificed 
yourself;  and  if  you  could  sacrifice  yourself, 
then  I  did  not  want  you.  You  let  me  go  and 
stood  to  your  work,  stood  true  to  yourself; 
and  though  it  hurt  me  at  the  time  more  than 


272  The  Heroine  in  Bronze 

you  can  ever  know,  this  was  the  turning  point : 
from  that  moment  you  drew  me  to  you." 

She  was  telling  her  story  quite  as  though  I 
were  not  listening,  quite  as  though  she  were 
going  over  in  memory  her  own  past : — 

"Later,  another  trouble  came  up  about  the 
book.  This  time  it  was  something  that  I  kept 
to  myself  :  I  did  not  wish  you  to  understand  the 
nature  of  it;  I  had  my  reason  and  the  reason 
seemed  to  me  absolutely  good.  I  would  not 
explain.  This  offended  you  and  you  sought 
to  withdraw  yourself  and  your  work.  You 
believed  you  were  right  and  that  I  was  wrong, 
and  again  you  stood  to  your  right  and  left  me 
to  the  consequences  of  my  error.  You  would  not 
stop  for  what  you  could  not  understand ;  and 
that  to  me  is  one  of  life's  greatest  tests :  to  live 
in  the  light  of  all  that  you  see  and  to  let  the 
unseen  take  care  of  itself.  I  suppose  people  go 
to  pieces  many  a  time  over  things  in  others 
that  they  cannot  understand.  Then  once  more 
the  book  began  to  fail,  and  I  knew  I  could  help 
you  and  you  would  not  permit  me  to  help. 
You  threw  it  back  upon  yourself  to  know  your 


The  Getting  Home  273 

work  as  well  as  I  knew  it,  as  well  as  any  one 
could  know  it.  You  would  not  receive  from  me 
a  single  suggestion,  even  to  save  the  book  from 
being  a  failure.  That  was  another  test,  —  a 
man's  mastery  of  what  he  sets  out  to  do :  it  is 
perfectly  true  that  if  he  cannot  do  his  work,  no 
one  else  can  do  it  for  him.  And  then  the  last 
test  of  all !  The  end  of  the  book  was  like  an 
arraignment  of  me;  it  was  like  a  judgment 
passed  on  me  for  my  own  traits  of  character; 
and  you  came  to  read  it  to  me  at  a  moment  when 
you  most  desired  to  inflict  no  wound,  to  make  me 
happy  and  to  win  me.  But  you  adhered  to  the 
true  course  of  your  story :  you  stood  by  the 
heroine  there  and  not  by  the  heroine  here. 
And  I  liked  you  best  of  all  for  that.  If  you 
had  changed  your  work  at  its  finish  with  any 
thought  of  me,  you  would  have  lowered  yourself 
at  the  very  instant  when  I  wanted  to  see  you 
highest." 

A  long  silence  fell  on  us.  She  broke  it  with 
one  of  those  humorous  transitions  which  mark 
the  equipoise  of  her  character,  its  breadth,  its 
balance :  — 


274  The  Heroine  in  Bronze 

"Of  course  I  should  not  speak  of  these  things 
were  it  not  about  a  piece  of  my  own  property. 
I  am  merely  discussing  my  own  property;  and 
it  is  a  misfortune  that  the  piece  of  property 
happens  to  be  conscious  and  is  obliged  to  over 
hear  what  is  said." 

The  piece  of  property  did  not  object  to  being 
conscious,  even  though  wooden.  Still,  to  him 
the  mystery  had  not  wholly  disappeared;  one 
darkest  spot  yet  remained :  — 

"All  this  is  very  well  as  far  as  it  goes.  But 
the  very  heart  of  the  trouble  has  not  yet  been 
reached :  everything  is  now  clear  enough  as 
regards  me.  But  as  to  yourself :  what  was  the 
unknown  trouble?  What  was  it  that  you  re 
fused  to  explain?  I  have  always  believed  that 
it  related  to  the  heroine  of  the  story." 

"It  did  relate  to  her." 

"But  in  what  way  ?" 

"I  objected  to  the  presence  of  such  a  heroine 
in  a  story." 

"But  why?" 

"Because  /  was  the  heroine." 

I  turned  to  her  with  blank  stupefaction :  — 


The  Getting  Home  275 

"How  could  you  possibly  be  the  heroine  of  a 
story  laid  in  the  time  of  my  grandmother  — 
three-quarters  of  a  century  ago  —  in  an  old 
Southern  seminary,  nearly  a  thousand  miles 
away?" 

"You  transported  me  in  time  and  place  — 
that  is  all." 

I  pondered  this  new  difficulty :  — 

"If  I  had  written  a  story  about  Helen  of 
Troy,  would  you  have  supposed  yourself  the 
heroine  of  that?" 

"It  would  have  been  my  only  chance  to  be 
Helen  of  Troy." 

"Do  you  possibly  think  yourself  the  heroine 
of  the  next  book  I  am  going  to  write  —  of  the 
one  that  I  have  not  yet  imagined  ? " 

"There  is  not  a  doubt  of  it." 

"Do  you  expect  to  be  the  heroine  of  all  the 
rest  of  them  that  I  am  to  write  ?  " 

"I  do." 

"You  mean  that  I  have  not  only  married 
you,  but  I  am  actually  the  husband  of  all  my 
own  heroines?" 

"What  a  lucky  husband  !" 


276  The  Heroine  in  Bronze 

"But  you  seem  to  glory  in  it,  to  demand  it  as 
a  right." 

"I  should  not  wonder." 

"And  so  you  began  by  being  offended  at  the 
idea  of  being  the  first  heroine  and  you  conclude 
by  exacting  that  you  be  all  the  heroines." 

"Let  any  other  woman  dare  !" 

"And  so  whatever  I  may  write,  it  will  always 
be  of  you?" 

"Did  you  not  yourself  once  send  me  a  Book 
of  the  Year  made  up  of  daily  stories ;  and  did 
you  not  then  say  that  I  was  in  every  story,  that 
you  always  displaced  the  actor  in  each  and  put 
me  in  the  actor's  place?  Alas  for  the  vows  of 
the  young  lover  when  they  are  translated  into 
the  deeds  of  a  young  husband  !  You  have  al 
ready  forgotten !" 

I  went  back  over  this  whole  troublous  field 
and  uttered  my  protest :  — 

"But  this  leaves  me  at  my  wit's  end.  The 
inconsistency  of  it  all !  What  are  you  going 
to  do  about  the  inconsistency?" 

She  was  radiant  with  enjoyment  of  the  situa 
tion.  There  was  almost  the  taunt  of  coquetry 


The  Getting  Home  277 

in  her,  for  though  as  a  girl  she  had  revealed  no 
touch  of  coquetry,  as  a  young  wife  she  was  full 
of  it.  She  now  appeared  to  have  brought  the 
issue  to  a  quarter  of  the  battle  field  where  she 
was  sure  of  victory  : — 

"I  am  not  going  to  do  anything  about  the 
inconsistency !  That  is  the  beauty  of  incon 
sistency  —  that  if  you  try  to  change  it,  you 
destroy  it.  What  would  life  be  without  it? 
We  might  as  well  be  bees,  doomed  to  make 
only  wax  and  fill  it  forever  with  honey.  But 
only  bees  can  abide  with  wax  and  honey.  True, 
they  fight,  but  then  it  must  be  when  one  con 
sistency  runs  against  another  consistency :  it 
is  a  fight  between  two  consistencies,  each  bent 
upon  being  consistent.  In  human  life  we  make 
room  for  inconsistency  !" 

"That  is  a  very  fine  theory  of  cloying  sweet 
ness  for  wives,"  I  said,  "but  I  wonder  how  it 
would  work  out  in  practice  for  husbands. 
Would  this  scheme  allow  room  for  husbands?" 

"Ample  room !  Ample  or  not,  it  is  the  only 
scheme  for  us  to  work  with." 

She  was  laughing  at  me.     She  reigned  abso- 


278  The  Heroine  in  Bronze 

lute  on  the  throne  of  woman's  inconsistency, 
and  even  struck  me  on  the  head  with  her  sceptre. 
After  a  few  moments  of  reflection  I  wondered 
whether  I  might  cast  an  instantaneous  shadow 
on  that  luminous  nature  for  the  sake  of  with 
drawing  the  shadow  and  showing  a  steady  light 
shining  behind ;  might  I  be  unkind  for  a  mo 
ment,  to  demonstrate  the  nature  of  kindness? 
Slowly  as  though  the  words  were  torn  from  me 
with  reluctance,  I  said : — 

"What  you  have  told  me  now  brushes  the 
mystery  away:  it  is  all  clear  light  in  whatso 
ever  direction  I  look.  That  is  your  side.  On 
my  side  there  is  something  that  you  have  never 
suspected.  With  you  it  has  been  an  explanation, 
with  me  it  will  have  to  be  —  a  confession." 

That  word  fell  as  a  chill  on  the  twilight  of 
the  garden.  It  seemed  to  come  out  of  darkness, 
to  be  a  messenger  of  night,  of  things  not  seen. 
I  said  nothing  more.  I  gave  the  evil  charm  time 
to  work.  The  silence  grew  more  intense,  and 
I  would  not  break  it.  At  last  I  heard  her  voice 
at  a  greater  distance  from  my  ear  —  for  she 
had  moved  away  from  me :  — 


The  Getting  Home  279 

"What  is  —  the  confession ?" 

I  made  no  reply.  I  could  feel  fear  taking 
possession  of  her.  She  said  again  in  such  a 
voice  as  I  could  not  have  believed  to  be  hers : — 

"I  am  waiting  to  hear." 

But  I  kept  silent  and  turned  away  from  her 
on  the  seat.  She  sprang  up  and  came  around 
on  the  other  side  of  me  and  sat  close  that  her 
eyes  might  read  my  features  through  the  gloom. 
And  again  her  tones,  now  tremulous,  broken 
with  dread  and  anguish :  — 

"I  will  know!" 

I  began,  moving  away  from  her  and  turning 
my  face  off : — 

"Then  you  shall  know.  The  day  you  left 
me  to  go  to  Europe,  you  remember  that  you 
left  me  rejected,  dismissed  —  without  reason. 
And  I  am  human.  It  was  more  than  I  could 
endure.  And  I  found  another.  And  it  was 
she  who  that  long  summer  shared  my  loneliness. 
It  was  she  who  smiled,  she  who  cheered  me  when 
I  was  discouraged  and  rested  me  when  I  was 
worn  out.  You  have  insisted  that  there  was 
a  heroine  in  that  story.  There  was  none  in  the 


280  Ths  Heroine  in  Bronze 

sense  you  mean.  There  was  one  in  the  sense  I 
mean :  and  you  were  not  that  heroine,  she  was 
the  heroine.  When  I  married  you,  I  was  false 
enough  to  forget  her.  Now,  I  begin  to  remem 
ber  her  again.  That  is  my  confession." 

I  leaned  over  and  looked  into  her  face:  it 
was  white  with  terror.  For  a  while  she  sat 
quite  still,  gazing  simply  out  into  the  night. 
An  incredible  transformation  had  taken  place 
in  her :  her  face  became  the  face  of  her  girlhood  : 
marriage  had  dropped  away  from  her ;  she  had 
repudiated  it  and  me  and  her  child ;  she  was 
back  in  her  girlhood,  having  fled  from  the  pres 
ent  to  the  safety  of  her  past. 

Then  without  a  word  she  suddenly  started 
up  and  slipped  swiftly  away  through  the  twi 
light  and  her  white  figure  disappeared  across 
the  yard  :  unconsciously  she  took  the  direction 
that  led  her  out  of  her  father's  home  through 
the  servant's  gate:  the  difference  between  ser 
vant  and  mistress  had  been  blotted  out  to  her 
in  her  stricken  humanity. 

I  followed  and  found  her  at  home,  lying  face 
downward  on  her  couch  —  it  had  been  the  couch 


The  Getting  Home  281 

of  her  girlhood  —  wounded  beyond  her  strength 
to  bear,  cold  and  shuddering. 

I  lifted  her,  and,  supporting  her,  led  her  into 
another  room  where  I  had  stored  some  bachelor 
belongings. 

And  there,  taking  down  that  image  of  herself 
from  which  all  her  mistakes  and  weaknesses 
had  been  refined  away,  leaving  only  those  traits 
of  her  nature  which  I  had  always  held  to  and 
which  I  believed  would  never  fail  me,  I  unveiled 
for  her,  hidden  in  the  white  mists  of  her  scarf, 
the  heroine  in  bronze. 


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The  Doctor's  Christmas  Eve 

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